Planning · Councils · Hunter
Five Hunter councils are ranked this month for a share of $67 million, and the bar moves every round
The NSW government pays councils to assess development applications faster. Round two of the scheme ranks them on their 2025-26 performance, and the guidelines say results land August to September 2026. Five Hunter councils are on the eligible list and four are not. The part worth understanding before the results arrive is the benchmark: it tightened from 115 days to 105 between rounds, and it is measured as whichever is the lesser of that figure or the council's own previous year. Improve, and your own bar comes down with you.
We have written before about who decides a Hunter development application. This is about what the state pays a council for deciding them quickly, which is a live incentive sitting on top of that structure, and it is about to produce a ranked list.
Who is in, and for how much
Eligibility is not by application. The guidelines are explicit:
There is no need to formally apply to the program
. Councils are ranked from the state's own
data, and the funding cap each one plays for is set by its dwelling target, because
Councils with higher dwelling targets have higher funding caps than those with lower
targets
.
| Housing target band | Cap per council | Hunter councils listed |
|---|---|---|
| More than 10,000 dwellings | $3 million | Newcastle |
| 5,000 to 10,000 | $2 million | Lake Macquarie, Maitland |
| 1,000 to 5,000 | $1 million | Cessnock, Port Stephens |
Round two provides up to $67 million in total, part of $200 million across the program's three rounds.
And who is not
Singleton, Muswellbrook, Dungog and Upper Hunter do not appear on either eligible list. The threshold is councils expected to deliver more than 1,000 dwellings in the Housing Accord period, and a second table covers regional councils without a housing target but anticipating more than 1,000 dwellings of growth. No Hunter council appears on that one either.
That is not a judgement on those councils. It is a scheme aimed at where the dwellings are, and the consequence is simply that four of the region's nine councils have no access to this pool of infrastructure money however fast they assess.
The benchmark, and why it is a ratchet
This is the part that changes how any council's number should be read. The expectation for
determining development applications is whichever is the lesser of the council's own previous
financial year average, or 115 days of lodgement between 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025 (round
one)
and 105 days of lodgement between 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026
for round two.
Two things follow. The fixed figure tightened by ten days between rounds. And because the test takes the lesser of the two, a council that gets faster is measured against its own better number next time. The fixed day-count is a ceiling, not a target, and it stops being the binding constraint the moment a council beats it.
How the ranking actually works
Round two scores two things.
Round two will focus on two aspects of improvement
: percentage improvement against the
council's individual target for 2025-26, weighted 60 per cent, and absolute improvement in days
against 2024-25, weighted 40 per cent.
The sharp edge is in the first one:
Councils that do not meet their target will receive a negative score
. Not zero. Negative.
A council that slips does not merely fail to gain ground in the ranking, it loses it.
Then the money is not spread around. Only the top performing councils, those with the highest
scores, will be offered infrastructure grant funding for the round
, and how many that is
depends on the field and the caps. If two councils tie in a way that affects the allocation, the
volume of applications determined and the number of homes being delivered break it.
The design intent is stated plainly:
Councils making significant improvements to meet and exceed their individual expectations will
receive the highest scores
. This rewards the trajectory, not the absolute speed, which is why a
slow council that improves sharply can outrank a fast one that stands still.
What happens next, and when
The guidelines give indicative timing. Council ranking results for Round two announced
in
August to September 2026, with successful councils then asked to nominate an infrastructure
project. Nominations run October to November 2026 through SmartyGrants, assessment of those
projects runs December 2026 to February 2027, and the funded projects are announced March to April
2027. Money must be spent on infrastructure supporting new homes, completed by 30 June 2029.
Our view
Labelled as opinion, on the guidelines quoted above. Paying for improvement rather than for absolute speed is the right call, and the negative score for missing your own target is a real piece of design rather than decoration. A scheme that only rewarded the fastest would hand money to councils with the simplest caseloads.
The ratchet is the part worth watching rather than criticising yet. It is defensible while councils are still well above the fixed figures, because there is genuine ground to make up. It becomes a different instrument once a council is at or under its own best, when the only way to score is to keep beating a number it has already worked hard for. Whether that is sustainable is a question for round three, and the results due in the next few weeks are the first real evidence.
What this does not tell you
It does not say which councils will succeed, and nothing here predicts the ranking. The timeframes are the guidelines' own and are marked indicative, so they may move. We have not obtained any council's 2025-26 assessment average, and the figures that decide this are the state's Planning Portal data rather than anything a council publishes itself. No council or officer is criticised here.
Sources
- NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Faster Assessments Incentive Program: Round two competitive grant guidelines (PDF, first published July 2026, downloaded and read 27 Aug 2026): that there is no need to formally apply; the funding caps of $3 million, $2 million and $1 million by housing target band and the councils listed in each, including Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock and Port Stephens; that round two provides up to $67 million of the $200 million across three rounds; the second table of regional councils without a housing target; the eligibility threshold of more than 1,000 dwellings in the Housing Accord period; the benchmark as the lesser of a council's own previous financial year average or 115 days for round one and 105 days for round two; the two assessment criteria and their 60 and 40 per cent weightings; that councils which do not meet their target receive a negative score; that only the top performing councils are offered funding and how ties are broken; and the stage timings from the announcement of ranking results through to funded projects and the 30 June 2029 completion date.
How we did this. Every figure and quotation comes from the program's own round two guidelines, downloaded from the department and read directly rather than from a media release or a council statement. The eligible-council table on this page is our own extraction of the Hunter rows from the guidelines' two funding tables; the guidelines list every eligible NSW council, and we have reproduced only the Hunter ones and named the bands they sit in. The statement that Singleton, Muswellbrook, Dungog and Upper Hunter are absent is a check we ran against both tables in the document, not an inference from the Hunter rows alone. Dollar figures are stated in our own words rather than quoted, because the extracted text carries spacing artefacts inside some numerals and a quotation should not reproduce those. No council, councillor or officer is assessed or criticised, and the subject is a published funding guideline.
Spotted an error, or have the results landed? Tell us and we will check it against the guidelines and log the outcome here.