The Planning Function Review

Council’s independent review of how planning applications are handled in Kingborough is now public. Here is what it covered and what it found.

Cr Aldo Antolli, Candidate for Mayor  |  Kingborough  |  Monday 21 September 2026

↗ Download the report from Kingborough Council ↓ The findings ← Back to Resources

In March 2026 Council engaged Circular South to review the end-to-end statutory planning application process: how an application is lodged, assessed, referred and decided. Not individual applications, not planners’ professional judgement, not the performance of any individual member of staff. The process, the systems and the operating model. The final report (version 2.1, dated 17 September 2026) runs to 112 pages with 45 recommendations, ten of them marked priority.

I have argued for this review, and for the customer-first rebuild of planning it points to, since before it was commissioned. It sits at the heart of Priority 2, Planning reform that actually works, and Priority 3, the review of council department functions. So I want residents, builders, farmers and business owners to read it for themselves, which is why the link to Council’s copy is the first thing on this page.

What the review looked at

Interviews with planning staff, seven external developers and consultants, five internal department heads and a survey of most elected members. Three years of complaints. Benchmarking against Clarence City Council and Huon Valley Council. Three years of data on lodgements, planner hours and closures.

The findings, in plain terms

Demand is down, not up

Quarterly lodgements averaged about 220 in 2019 and have settled at about 145 a quarter over the last two years. Volume does not explain the pressure on the department. The report raises the possibility that some demand is being suppressed or diverted because Kingborough is perceived as more difficult, costly or uncertain than neighbouring councils.

Effort per application has roughly doubled

Application closures per planner hour fell from about 0.66 in 2019-20 to about 0.35 in 2025-26, while the hours planners spend per application rose. The report is careful to say this is not a precise productivity measure. It is still the clearest single number in the document.

Capacity is fragile

Turnover, leave and sick leave eat into effective capacity. The staffing buffer reached about zero in late 2025 and spending on consultants rose sharply from the second quarter of 2025.

The operating model is reactive

No agreed measures of success, unclear roles, reliance on a few key people, informal decision-making, and knowledge held in emails and spreadsheets rather than in systems.

Requests for information are the biggest single frustration

Repeated, sequential, late, generic and not always tied to material issues. Referral advice often lands on day 21 and reports are finalised at the last moment. This is the “excessive use of requests for information” the flyer in your letterbox talks about, described in Council’s own commissioned review.

The assessment culture is risk-averse

Compliance-heavy, not proportionate to risk, and reinforcing what the report calls a more defensive assessment culture.

Customer access is poor

Face-to-face technical support at the counter is limited to a 1.30pm to 3.30pm window. The email service standard is ten business days; the report recommends two. Complex proposals rely on informal relationships to get answers.

Other findings

General Manager consent, handled outside the planning team, adds delay. Referral processes, case management and cross-department handoffs are described as fragmented, manual or inconsistently governed.

What it recommends

The ten priority recommendations: stabilise the workforce and cut consultant reliance; set success metrics and report on them; clarify roles; build a knowledge hub; adopt internal assessment guides; cut avoidable requests for information; define a pre-lodgement service; guided journeys on the website; customer journey governance; and a public communication programme. Thirty-one of the 45 are rated low effort, most deliverable within one week to three months. The report does not cost its recommendations and says so: it is not a fully quantified financial business case.

Three things to read with care

• The report says its findings should not be read as criticism of individual staff, and it found a dedicated and committed team. I agree with both. The problems are in the system those people work inside, which is exactly why they need fixing.
• Recommendation 44 would route councillors’ questions on planning items through management at least two business days before a meeting rather than to planners directly, and keep in-meeting questions to material already before Council. Recommendation 30 would have internal assessment guides approved by the General Manager rather than the elected Council. Both bear on how much scrutiny elected members can bring to planning decisions. I will have more to say on them.
• Concerns relayed by councillors on behalf of residents are described in the report as often perception-based or generalised. Residents who have lived through a 21-day request for information might see that differently. The review counted 274 problem statements from staff and 137 from applicants; it did not survey applicants at large.

Figures and quotations on this page are taken from the report at the link above. Page references are to the report’s own numbering. This page is my summary and commentary, not a Council document.