Guide · Development · Hunter
State significant development: how to find the Hunter projects your council does not decide
If you go looking for a big Hunter project on your council’s development register and cannot find it, the likely reason is not that you searched badly. Some developments are not the council’s to decide. They are assessed by the state, they live on a different public register, and that register has exactly one stage out of eight where your submission counts.
This is the third guide in a set, and it answers the question that comes before the other two. Once you have found an application, our companion guides cover how to object to a development application and how rezoning works. This one is about the projects that never appear on the council track at all, and a fourth covers who decides the ones that do.
Two registers, and the split is about who decides
Most building work is a development application, lodged with and determined by your council. That is the track our submission guide covers. But a category called State Significant Development is assessed by the NSW planning department instead, and those applications are published on the state’s Major Projects register rather than on a council system. The consent authority changes, so the register changes with it.
This is not an abstraction in the Hunter. Reporting we have done on the port’s battery storage approval, the Macquarie coal tailings dam and the mine site master plans all sits on this track. So does a 43 storey tower at Wickham, which we come to below.
Filter the register to your own council area
The register carries every major project in NSW, which is useless until you narrow it. It has a local government area filter, and the filter is a plain part of the web address, so you can go straight to your own area and bookmark it.
The Hunter councils and their filter numbers, taken from the register’s own list: Newcastle City 86, Lake Macquarie City 66, Cessnock City 26, Maitland City, Port Stephens, Singleton Shire, Muswellbrook Shire and Upper Hunter Shire. For Newcastle, that makes the address planningportal.nsw.gov.au/major-projects/projects?lga=86, and swapping the number moves you to another area. There is a matching on exhibition view that takes the same filter and shows only what is currently open for comment.
When we filtered to Newcastle City on 23 August 2026 the register returned nine projects, and eight of the nine were modifications to developments already approved rather than new proposals: several at Honeysuckle Drive, one at Horizon Lee, and a reconfiguration of a multi-purpose terminal. That is a snapshot and it will change, but it is worth knowing before you go looking, because a modification is where the detail of an approved project quietly moves.
Eight stages, and only one of them is your window
Every project page carries the same named pipeline, and the current stage is marked on it. In order, they are SEARs (the secretary’s environmental assessment requirements), Prepare EIS, Exhibition, Collate Submissions, Response to Submissions, Assessment, Recommendation and Determination.
The one that matters to a reader is the third. Exhibition is the public submission window, and it sits early: by the time a project reaches Assessment or Recommendation, the stage where a decision starts to look imminent, the opportunity to make a submission has already passed. Watching for Determination is watching for the end.
The Wickham tower is a working example of reading the pipeline. Its register entry describes a
43 storey mixed-use development with approximately 200 dwellings (including 42 affordable
housing dwellings) and 99 co-living units including parking
, sits in Newcastle City, and its
current status when we read it was Response to Submissions. That tells you the
exhibition has closed and the applicant is now answering what the public said.
Two things the register does that a council system may not
The first is that it will tell you when something happens. Each project page carries a notify me option, so you can follow one project without checking the register by hand. If there is a single practical takeaway here, it is that one.
The second is worth knowing before you write anything: submissions are published on the register, readable in full alongside the application. Our submission guide makes the same point about the council track under the heading that your submission is a public document. It is true on both tracks, and on this one the submissions sit in an obvious place next to the project.
How we made this
Read from the register itself on 23 August 2026 rather than from guidance about it: the Major Projects section of the NSW Planning Portal, the local government area filter and its option values as they appear in the register’s own markup, the on exhibition view, and one project page in full. The stage names are the ones the register displays. The nine-project count and the eight modifications are what the Newcastle City filter returned on that date, and both will move.
What we have not done here: this guide does not cover how each Hunter council runs its own development application tracker, which differs between them, and it does not set out the legal thresholds that make a particular development state significant rather than local. Those thresholds sit in state planning policy and deserve their own treatment. We name the filter numbers for Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Cessnock because we read them directly; the remaining Hunter councils appear in the same list and can be selected from the filter. We hold no interest in any project named here and have not contacted any applicant.
Sources
- NSW Planning Portal, Major Projects register (read 23 August 2026): that State Significant Development is published here rather than on a council system, the local government area filter and its option values including Newcastle City 86, Lake Macquarie City 66 and Cessnock City 26, the presence of Maitland, Port Stephens, Singleton, Muswellbrook and Upper Hunter in the same list, and the nine projects returned for Newcastle City on that date of which eight were modifications.
- NSW Planning Portal, Major Projects on exhibition (read 23 August 2026): the view restricted to projects currently open for comment, carrying the same local government area filter.
- NSW Planning Portal, 10 Dangar St Wickham Mixed-use development (read 23 August 2026): the application description quoted above, its identification as State Significant Development in Newcastle City, the current status of Response to Submissions, the eight named assessment stages from SEARs to Determination, the notify me option, and the publication of submissions on the project page.
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