South Australia's Three Consents: Why One Approval Is Never Enough

South Australia Consents: Approval is a set of gates, not one decision

In most states a developer talks about “getting DA approval”. In South Australia that sentence will get you into trouble, because development approval is not one decision. It can be three separate consents, granted by different people at different times, and until the required ones are in place your subdivision is not approved at all.

For a Think Property Club student looking at an SA site, the useful question is not “is it zoned for subdivision?” but “which consents does this project need, who grants each one, and in what order?”

The deal question

You have found an SA site with subdivision upside. Before you make the offer, can you articulate exactly which consents the project requires and what each one depends on? If the answer is vague, you are pricing a project you cannot yet schedule.

The checks a student would run

• Planning consent. Assessed against the Planning and Design Code for planning impact — overlooking, overshadowing, noise, access, significant trees.
• Land division consent. Required where boundaries are created, moved or deleted, and assessed against infrastructure and servicing requirements so the new allotments will be appropriately serviced.
• Building consent. Required for building work, including demolition, and assessed against the Building Rules. It can be required even where the built form is not changing, because a change of use can change fire safety requirements.
• Who is the relevant authority. Council, an accredited professional, a council assessment panel, or the State Planning Commission — and for land division, potentially an accredited professional surveyor.
• Servicing and infrastructure. What the new allotments need in water, sewer, stormwater, power and access, and whether anything must be constructed or vested before titles.
• The variation route. If the plans change after approval, who can vary the consent you hold, and how long that takes.

The order and reasoning behind the checks

Planning consent first, because land division consent cannot stand alone — a development approval that includes land division consent must also include a planning consent. Then land division, because it is the consent that carries infrastructure obligations and therefore the largest hidden cost. Then building consent, which attaches to the built form and can be dealt with later, but should still be scoped early because it can trigger demolition conditions or fire safety upgrades. Authority identification should happen before lodgement, not after, because it changes who you are dealing with and how a variation is handled.

The trap or expensive mistake

The trap is assuming an approval you already hold covers the next step. A buyer who sees an existing planning consent on the title may assume the subdivision is done, when the land division consent — the one that requires servicing and infrastructure — has never been applied for. That mistake shows up late, at the point where you are trying to register the plan, and it lands directly on your holding costs.

The second trap is procedural drift on who signs. PlanSA's release notes record that where an accredited professional has granted a planning consent, a minor variation to that planning consent after final development approval must be assessed by a council assessment manager, except where the State Planning Commission issued the approval. The same release notes describe the removal of the ability for an accredited professional building level 1 to assess planning consents. In November 2025 further regulation amendments changed accredited professional scope, as Norman Waterhouse summarised, including that an accredited professional building level 1 may act as relevant authority for building consent and a change affecting accredited professional surveyors issuing consents for deemed-to-satisfy divisions. If your program assumes a private pathway that no longer exists, you find out at lodgement.

What the rule actually means

The Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 provides that a development is an approved development if, and only if, a relevant authority has assessed the development against, and granted a consent in respect of, each relevant matter: the Planning and Design Code for planning consent, the Building Rules for building consent, and the land division requirements for land division consent. An application may be made for all or any of those consents, or for one or more of them, and elements requiring planning consent can be assessed separately by different relevant authorities. PlanSA's guidance on types of consent is the plain-English version: approval consists of one or more consents, and the consents you need depend on what you are proposing and where. The development application form is the approved form under section 119(1) and can cover one or more of the consents required.

What the result means for feasibility and the offer

Take a simple illustration: a suburban SA site bought with the intention of creating two allotments and a dwelling on each. The project needs planning consent for the division and the proposed development, and land division consent assessed against infrastructure requirements. Land division consent will only be issued once servicing requirements are satisfied or conditioned, and the costs of those works sit in your feasibility as a fixed obligation, not a variable.

Now price the risk properly. If the planning consent already exists, you still need to confirm whether land division consent has been granted or applied for, what conditions would be imposed for water, sewer, stormwater and access, and what has to be built before the plan is registered. Where the answer is uncertain, the honest offer is lower, or conditional on obtaining land division consent within a stated period. What students learn is not to treat approval as a yes/no switch. It is a set of gates, and each gate has a cost and a timeline that belongs in the spread sheet before the offer, not after.

The Think Property Club lesson

Define the approval you are actually buying. A developer who can name every consent a project needs, the authority that will grant it, and the sequence in which it must be obtained is already ahead of most of the market — and that is precisely the diligence discipline the Club teaches, applied to one deal at a time.

Practical checklist and next steps

• Write out which of planning, land division and building consent your project needs, and which are already granted.
• Confirm the relevant authority for each consent, and check its current accredited professional scope on PlanSA.
• Obtain a servicing assessment for the proposed allotments and price the works or charges as fixed obligations.
• Confirm what must be completed before the plan of division can be registered, and place that milestone in your program.
• Before you exchange, get written confirmation of the variation route for the consent you will hold — including who assesses a minor variation after final approval.

Learn with Jason & AmyBuild practical small-scale property development skills with experienced mentors.Enquire now