News · Council money · Hunter
Five Hunter councils took $9 million of a $53.9 million state round. The other four were never eligible
Maitland announced on 6 August that its development assessment speed had won it $2 million. It had. But the announcement is one line of a state table, and the table is the more interesting document: 30 councils shared $53,852,119, five of them in the Hunter, and each of those five received exactly the maximum its housing-target band allowed. Singleton, Muswellbrook, Dungog and Upper Hunter received nothing, and the guidelines show why: they are not on the eligible list, for this round or the next one.
The Faster Assessments Incentive Program is a NSW Government scheme that pays councils for approving development quickly. It will award up to $200 million over three years, and the money has to be spent on infrastructure that supports new housing, finished by 30 June 2029. Round one landed in July: $53.86 million of state money against $52.18 million of council contributions, for 30 projects.
Maitland City Council put out a release on 6 August saying its assessment performance had secured a $2 million funding injection. That is accurate. What a single council release cannot show you is the shape of the whole round, so we read the program’s own allocation table and both sets of guidelines.
What each Hunter council got
| Council | Funded | Band cap | Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newcastle | $3,000,000 | $3m | Union Street streetscape renewal |
| Lake Macquarie | $2,000,000 | $2m | Charlestown to Whitebridge corridor upgrade, stage 1 |
| Maitland | $2,000,000 | $2m | Max McMahon Oval redevelopment, stage 2 |
| Cessnock | $1,000,000 | $1m | Leaconfield Street bridge replacement |
| Port Stephens | $1,000,000 | $1m | Ferodale and Peppertree road intersection upgrade |
| Singleton | Nothing | Not eligible | Not on the eligible-council tables |
| Muswellbrook | Nothing | Not eligible | Not on the eligible-council tables |
| Dungog | Nothing | Not eligible | Not on the eligible-council tables |
| Upper Hunter | Nothing | Not eligible | Not on the eligible-council tables |
The five funded councils took $9 million between them, which is 16.7 per cent of a statewide round. That is a large share of a state fund for one region, and it is worth saying plainly before anything else: on this measure the lower Hunter did well.
The detail that took us from the release to the guidelines is in the third column. Every one of the five received the exact maximum for its band. The program sets a cap by how many dwellings a council is expected to deliver: $3 million for a council with a housing target above 10,000, $2 million for 5,000 to 10,000, $1 million for 1,000 to 5,000. Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock and Port Stephens each got their cap to the dollar. Whatever else the scoring did, it did not produce partial grants here.
One more thing sits in those tables and is easy to miss. In round one, the 5,000 to 10,000 band for regional councils contained exactly two councils in the whole state: Lake Macquarie and Maitland. Newcastle, meanwhile, is classified as metropolitan for this program’s purposes, not regional.
Why four councils got nothing
The obvious reading of a table with four blanks in it is that four councils were slow. That is not what happened, and the guidelines are explicit about it.
Eligibility is not open to every council. The program says it is available to medium and
high-growth councils
, with eligibility linked to housing targets
, and the round two
guidelines set the floor as councils expected to deliver more than 1,000 dwellings in the
Housing Accord period
. Both rounds then publish the eligible councils by name. Counting the
tables, round one lists 53 eligible councils and round two lists 53 as well.
Singleton, Muswellbrook, Dungog and Upper Hunter are on none of them. They did not lose a competition; they were not entered in one. Their assessment times, whatever those are, could not have earned them a dollar of this program.
Our view, labelled as such
This is a coherent policy on its own terms. If the aim is 377,000 new homes by 2029, paying the councils that approve most of them to build the parks and roads those homes need is a reasonable way to spend $200 million. Nobody has been treated unfairly.
But it is worth naming what a growth-linked fund does over three years in a region shaped like this one. The Hunter’s money followed its growth corridor precisely: Newcastle, the lake, Maitland, and the two councils either side of them. The four that got nothing are the coalfields and the shires behind them, which is the part of the Hunter with the hardest economic transition ahead and the least ability to fund community infrastructure from its own rate base. A program keyed to dwelling targets will, by construction, send the least money to the places where growth has stalled, and it will do it again in round two.
That is not an argument that this program is wrong. It is an argument that it cannot be the instrument that helps the upper Hunter, and that anyone reading “$54 million for councils” should know which councils were allowed in the room.
What happens next, and it is dated
Round two is open, worth up to $67 million, and it scores councils on their performance during the 2025-26 financial year. The same five Hunter councils are eligible; the same four are not. Round two also carries one change worth recording: the guidelines note that round one was to have been funded under Restart NSW, and that the government has since decided to fund the program through the NSW Consolidated Fund instead, so the Restart NSW Fund Act 2011 does not apply to it.
How we sourced this
The allocation figures, the project names and the round total come from the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure’s own Faster Assessments Incentive Program page, read on 16 August 2026. The band caps and the eligible-council lists come from the round one and round two grant guidelines, both downloaded as PDFs and read. Maitland’s own figures come from its 6 August media release.
Our arithmetic, and one trap in it. The $9 million Hunter total and the
16.7 per cent share are our sums from the published table. That table ends with a
Total funding
row of $53,852,119 carrying no council name; adding the column without
excluding it produces $107,704,238, exactly double the real figure. We excluded it, and our sum
of the 30 named projects reproduces the table’s own total to the dollar.
What we have not done. We have not contacted any council or the department, and we would publish a response. We have not independently verified Maitland’s 85-day average, its count of 858 development applications worth $483 million, or its planning director’s statement that only three councils in the state assessed more applications with a lower average in the same period. Those are the council’s figures and claims, attributed to it. We have also not established why any individual council sits in the band it does, nor whether Singleton, Muswellbrook, Dungog or Upper Hunter sought eligibility; we report only that they are absent from the published tables.
Sources
- NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Faster Assessments Incentive Program (read 16 August 2026): the round one allocation table naming all 30 funded councils, their projects and amounts, including the five Hunter grants; the $53.86 million state contribution against $52.18 million from councils; the up-to-$200-million, three-year scale; that eligibility is available to medium and high-growth councils and is linked to housing targets; that funding must deliver infrastructure supporting new homes and be complete by 30 June 2029; that 35 councils met or exceeded the 115-day benchmark, with averages of 89 days for metropolitan and 82 days for regional councils.
- NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Faster Assessments Incentive Program round one guidelines (PDF, downloaded and read 16 August 2026): the round one grant caps of $3 million, $2 million and $1 million by housing-target band, and the named eligible-council tables for metropolitan and regional councils, in which Lake Macquarie and Maitland are the only two regional councils in the 5,000 to 10,000 band and Newcastle appears among the metropolitan councils.
- NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Faster Assessments Incentive Program round two competitive grant guidelines, July 2026 (PDF, downloaded and read 16 August 2026): that round two provides up to $67 million and scores 2025-26 performance; the eligibility floor of more than 1,000 dwellings in the Housing Accord period; the round two eligible-council tables; and the footnote recording the change from Restart NSW funding to the NSW Consolidated Fund.
- Maitland City Council, Speedy DA sign-off sees Maitland Council unlock vital infrastructure funding (media release, 6 August 2026, read 16 August 2026): the $2 million grant, the Max McMahon Oval stage two scope, the council's stated 85-day average assessment timeframe for 2024/25, its count of 858 development applications totalling $483 million, and the quotations from Mayor Philip Penfold and Director City Planning Trevor Ryan.
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