Development Services 2019/20 Register of Cost Recovery Fees and Charges

With any new financial year, we update the fees and charges applicable to the services provided by Development Services. 
 
The updated Development Services Register of Cost Recovery Fees and Commercial Charges for 2019/20 was approved by council on 23 May 2019 and took effect on 1 July 2019.
 
The two existing Development Services fee schedules have been increased by approximately a 2% as well as the below changes made to each schedule:
 
Planning, Engineering and Environment Assessment:
  • Subsidy for Community, Sporting and Religious Organisations - wording has been clarified for ease of use and application.
  • Development Advice Services – wording in the ‘Note’ has been clarified to better describe the fee discount request process for a pre-lodgement or pre-application meeting fee where the subsequent and related development application is lodged for assessment.
  • Post Approval Processes – wording has been simplified in addition to changes in application fees where they relate to making a minor change to an approval and/or conditions of an approval.
  • Material Change of Use Increments – the majority of the uses have a base fee plus an increment fee per square metre, site area, unit or bed/camp-site.  These increment fees have not been increased since 2016/17, so an increase has been applied for the 2019/20 year.
  • Certificate/Searches/Information – the precinct enquiry letter fee has been removed because it is no longer applicable.
  • Subdivision Plan – endorsement of building format and standard format fees have been increased to bring them in line with the average fees of other similar sized South East Queensland (SEQ) Council’s. UDIA Queensland carried out an extensive benchmarking exercise across SEQ  fees and charges in 2018, which informed this fee change. Further, a new simplified fee structure has been introduced to be a minimum base fee of $995 with a fee of $410 per lot.
  • Miscellaneous Fees – addition of two new Administration fees, one being for a cancellation of a request to retrieve a development file or similar service and the other being the processing for an infrastructure agreement deed of variation or agreement.
Building and Plumbing Services:
  • Subsidy for Community, Sporting and Religious Organisations - wording has been clarified for ease of use and application.
  • Building Works Concurrence Agency – the fee for a minor or other change request to a dwelling approval has been revised and relocated to align with the same fees in the Planning, Engineering and Environment Assessment Schedule.
  • Stand Alone Fees - these fees have been removed to eliminate duplication as they are covered in the commercial plumbing fees.
  • Glossary - the list of plumbing fixtures, applicants and apparatus have been removed from the Glossary and a direct link provided to the source of truth in council’s website.
  • Backflow Prevention Device Registration - the existing scaled fee structure has been removed and replaced by a flat fee of $50 per device.
  • New Plumbing and Drainage Act - The implications of the Plumbing and Drainage Act 2018 commencing on 1 July 2019 have been taken into consideration in the review of these fees and charges.  Some of the key process changes in this new legislation are:
  • Fast track applications (Domestic sewer): Reducing current time frames from 20 business days to 2 business days to decide applications; and
  • Standard applications (Domestic non-sewer, Commercial sewer and Commercial non-sewer): Reducing current time frames from 20 business days to 10 business days to decide applications.

To address these key changes to the legislation, fee increases have been made to the base fee for sewered/non-sewered areas domestic and sewered/non-sewered commercial; fixture/appliance/apparatus fee for domestic uses and commercial uses; fee for submission of amended domestic plans/reports and amended commercial plans/reports; and fee for plumbing re-inspection and inspections undertaken outside of normal office hours.
 
Council will also be continuing to apply a number of development incentives which are fee based including Development Advice Services, the Community, Sporting and Religious Organisation 50% Fee Reduction, and the Specific Economic Development Fee 25% Rebate Scheme.
 
The two fee schedules for the 2019/20 Development Services Register of Cost Recovery Fees and Commercial Charges are available on council’s website.
 
Please contact council’s Development Information Officers on 5475 PLAN if you have any questions.