An applicant can choose to have a development application decided by a Development Assessment Panel (DAP) when the development’s estimated cost is $2 million or more, or when it includes community housing that a registered community housing provider will provide. Once that election is made, the panel decides the application as if it were the responsible authority, and neither the local government nor the Western Australian Planning Commission can decide it.
General informationThis page follows the Development Assessment Panels Regulations 2011 and the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage’s DAP pages, as read in October 2026. It is not advice about any application; the local government receiving an application, or the DAP secretariat in the department, can say how the rules apply to it.
The $2 million line, worded two ways
Regulation 6 prescribes an application for a development that “has an estimated cost of $2 million or more”, and the department’s lodging page uses the same words. The department’s reform page and its page on decision-makers put it differently: an opt-in system for development “over $2 million”. The two readings part only for a project estimated at exactly $2 million. The regulation’s words are the ones quoted first.
Community housing provided by a registered community housing provider can opt in whatever its value, though single homes stay excluded.
What cannot go to a panel
- A single house, with its carport, patio, outbuilding and incidental development.
- Development in an improvement scheme area, a public work, or development wholly inside a regional reserve under a region planning scheme.
- Any application about land in the Swan Valley.
- Applications made under Part 11B or Part 17 of the Act, the significant development pathways.
A local government can also hand the panel these decisions itself: by a decision of an absolute majority of its council, it may delegate to the DAP its power to decide applications in the same cost and community housing classes.
Three panels, five seats
Three panels cover every local government district in the State except Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
| Panel | Local government areas |
|---|---|
| Metro Inner | 19, making up the inner region of the Perth metropolitan area |
| Metro Outer | 14, making up the outer region of the Perth metropolitan area |
| Regional | 104, from regional cities to small, remote communities |
Where a site crosses districts with different panels, the panel covering the largest part of the land decides.
Each meeting has up to five members: three specialist members and two local government members. Specialists are experienced professionals in fields the regulations prescribe, either regular members (planning professionals employed only as DAP members unless the Minister approves otherwise, at least one at every meeting) or sessional members. One specialist presides. The local government members are councillors, bringing local knowledge to the panel; each local government may nominate two members and two alternates, and any three members, including the presiding member, make a quorum.
The panels sit outside both the department and the WAPC; the department’s DAP secretariat runs their administration. The changes of 1 March 2024 cut the number of panels from five to three and brought in fixed-term specialist members, while keeping two local government members on each panel.
From lodging to the meeting
The application still goes in to the local government, with everything its scheme and the deemed provisions ask for, plus the DAP form and the DAP fee, which is paid on top of the local government’s own fees. The panel regulations leave acceptance, advertising and requests for more information to the planning scheme. The local government guide sets those steps out.
Within 7 days of accepting it, the local government sends the application to the DAP executive director. The responsible authority, mostly the local government, then assesses it and writes a report in the approved form with a recommendation. The panel must have regard to that recommendation but is not bound by it, and can decide without a report if none arrives in time. The applicant is told when the report is received and when the panel will meet.
Suppose an application must be advertised, so the scheme gives 90 days from acceptance. The application is taken to be refused if it is not decided within those 90 days, and the report must be given at least 12 days before that happens. Counting back 12 days from day 90 gives 90 − 12 = day 78; counted strictly from the day after the 90 days end, the latest day would be 79, so day 78 meets the rule either way. Days the scheme does not count, such as an agreed period for further information, are left out of that count too, and the DAP executive director may extend the time with the applicant’s consent.
After a panel decides
The outcome is published in the meeting minutes. A panel approval must be substantially commenced within the period it states or, if it states none, within 4 years of the grant, or it lapses. That is longer than the 2 years a local government approval allows when it sets no period.
The owner may apply to the panel to extend that period, change or delete a condition, make a change that would not substantially alter the development, or cancel the approval, through the local government that took the original application. An applicant may ask the State Administrative Tribunal to review a refusal, a condition, or an application taken to be refused because the time ran out.
Larger projects may suit the Part 11B significant development pathway; review itself is in review at the State Administrative Tribunal.