What Happens When Your DA Lapses or Is Amended? Refinancing the Site
Lapsed Approval
Developers and landowners · Approval status in question · Careful guidance
A development approval that has lapsed, or one that is being modified, changes what your land is worth to a lender long before it changes anything on the ground. This guide sets out how long an approval actually lasts in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, whether the COVID era extensions still reach your consent after the 2025 reforms, what counts as physically commencing work, whether a modification resets the clock, and what a lapsed approval does to your existing facility, your valuation basis and your refinance options.
Quick Answer
When a development approval lapses, it stops authorising the development and the site may be revalued as unapproved land. Establish the operative date, lawful commencement evidence and current planning route first; then read the facility, calculate the timing gap and decide whether to re-approve, refinance, sell or hold.
| Your question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| What actually happens when it lapses? | The consent stops authorising the development. You cannot build under it, and there is no general power to revive a consent that has already lapsed. A fresh application is assessed under the controls in force now. |
| How long did I have? | In New South Wales, five years from the date the consent operates unless the consent authority set a shorter period. Queensland and Victoria run on different clocks and different triggers, and Victoria's are defaults that your permit can override. |
| Do the COVID extensions still help me? | Sometimes, and the window is closing. The provisions were removed from the Act in December 2025 but a savings provision preserves consents in force immediately before that. The surviving relief runs out around March 2027. |
| Does starting some work save it? | Only if the work is physical commencement. The regulation lists six things that expressly do not count on their own, and several of them are exactly what a developer does first. |
| Can I get an extension? | In New South Wales only in narrow circumstances, and only before expiry. Queensland and Victoria have broader extension routes. A complying development certificate cannot be extended by a court at all. |
| Does modifying the consent reset the clock? | No. The Act says a modification is taken not to be the granting of development consent, so the lapse date still runs from the original consent. |
| What does it do to my loan? | The security is revalued on a different basis, which can move the loan to value ratio without you borrowing another dollar. That is usually what triggers the phone call, not the planning problem itself. |
| Can the lender demand repayment? | Possibly, but not automatically. The lender's rights depend on the facility agreement and whether the lapse triggers a notification obligation, covenant, material adverse change review or event of default. Read the documents and get legal advice before making assumptions. |
| Can I still refinance the site? | Sometimes, and on a different basis to the route that funded it originally. The assessment moves from approved end value to current as-is value, and from a construction lender to a shorter, asset-backed structure while re-approval runs. |
| What should I do first? | Ask a town planner to document the operative date, lapse date, lawful commencement position and current planning route. Then have a property lawyer read the facility and a broker test whether the timing gap can be funded. |
What happens when your development approval lapses?
When a development consent lapses it stops authorising the development, and there is no general power anywhere in the New South Wales planning legislation to revive one that has already gone: the Act provides for extension only under section 4.54, and only before the period expires. A lapsed approval, often described as an expired DA, is not a paperwork problem that a phone call to the council will unwind. What you have left is land with a planning history, not land with an approval, and the practical route forward is a fresh application assessed against the environmental planning instruments and controls that apply on the day you lodge it. If the zoning, the height controls, the flood mapping or the contribution rates have moved since you were first approved, and over a five year window they often have, the scheme you get back may not be the scheme you lost.
Also called: a development consent in New South Wales, a development approval in Queensland, a planning permit in Victoria, or simply a DA. A lapsed approval is the same event people describe as an expired DA or an expired permit.
Most developers meet this problem through the planning door. They discover the date has passed, they call their planner, and the conversation is about re-approval. The perception worth correcting at the outset is that the finance consequence usually arrives first and moves faster. Your development approval is not a piece of administrative history to a lender. It is the thing that makes the land worth what the valuation says it is worth. Strip it out and the same parcel is valued on a different basis by the same valuer, which can move the loan to value ratio under a facility you have not touched. Nobody has drawn a dollar and nothing has been built, but the file has changed.
The sections below cover the planning mechanics properly, because you cannot answer the finance question without them, and then cover what the event does to the money. One boundary first: nothing here is planning or legal advice about your consent, because your consent is a document this page cannot see, and the conditions attached to it are where most of the real answers live.
How long is a development approval valid, and how do you check the lapse date?
Five years in most New South Wales cases, counted from the date the consent operates rather than the date on the letter. The Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 provides that "a development consent lapses 5 years after the date from which it operates" (section 4.53(1), current consolidation read in August 2026). Two qualifications sit immediately under it and both matter more than the headline. A consent authority "may reduce the period of 5 years in granting development consent", so your consent may carry a shorter period written into it. And the reduction is floored: it cannot cause a consent to erect or demolish a building, or to subdivide land, to lapse within two years of operating.
The date the consent operates is the second place people get this wrong. Where your consent carries a deferred commencement condition, it does not operate at all until you satisfy the consent authority on the matter specified. The Act deals with that case separately and strictly: such a consent "lapses if the applicant fails to satisfy the consent authority as to the matter specified in the condition within 5 years from the grant of the consent or, if a shorter period is specified by the consent authority, within the shorter specified period". An unsatisfied condition precedent is one of the more common ways a consent quietly runs out while everyone assumes the clock has not started, and it is worth being clear on what a lapsing period is measured from before you calculate your own.
How to find your own lapse date on the consent document
- Pull the notice of determination, the formal document the consent authority issued, not the stamped plans and not the most recent modification. The clock is calculated from this document and nothing later.
- Find the date the consent operates. For consents in the planning portal era, a development consent generally has effect from the date it is registered on the NSW planning portal rather than the date on the council's letter, with a longer deferral for designated development (section 4.20). The registered date is the anchor the five years runs from, and it appears on the notice.
- Check for a deferred commencement condition, wording along the lines of "this consent does not operate until". If one exists, the consent may not have begun operating at all, and it runs its own clock from the grant: satisfy the condition, or the consent lapses without the main period ever starting.
- Check for a reduced lapsing period, a condition providing that the consent lapses earlier than the statutory five years. This is also the condition that decides whether the one year extension route under section 4.54 exists for your consent at all.
- Only then read the modifications. Every modification determination carries its own recent date, and none of them moves the lapse date. Reading them first is how people convince themselves an expired consent is current.
Queensland and Victoria use different language, different triggers and different periods, and a developer holding sites in more than one state should not carry assumptions across the border. The table sets out the standard positions.
| State | The period | What actually stops the clock | The catch worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales Development consent | 5 years from the date the consent operates, unless the consent authority reduced it at grant | Physically commencing building, engineering or construction work on the land before the lapse date; or, for other development, actually commencing the use | A reduced period cannot bring a building or subdivision consent below 2 years. A deferred commencement consent lapses if the condition is never satisfied, on its own 5 year clock from grant |
| New South Wales Complying development certificate | 5 years from the date endorsed on the certificate | Physically commencing the development within that 5 year period | A CDC lapses under its own section, not the development consent section, and no court or tribunal can extend it. The COVID era extensions never reached CDCs |
| Queensland Material change of use | 6 years after the approval starts to have effect, if no period is stated in the approval | The first change of use happening within the period | The 4 years quoted by a lot of older material for a material change of use is the repealed Sustainable Planning Act 2009 figure, not current law. Check the approval first: a stated period displaces the default |
| Queensland Reconfiguring a lot | 4 years after the approval starts to have effect, if no period is stated | Giving the plan of reconfiguration to the local government for approval, not completing the works | The trigger is lodgement of the plan with the local government, which is earlier than most people assume and is worth diarising as its own milestone |
| Queensland Other development | 2 years after the approval starts to have effect, if no period is stated | Substantially starting the development | Separately, an approval can lapse for failing to complete within any period a development condition requires. Starting is not the end of the exposure |
| Victoria Planning permit | Defaults only: start within 3 years of issue, complete within 5 years, where the permit specifies no time | Starting the development within the specified or default period, and completing it within the specified or default period | The single most misread position in this guide. These are residual defaults. They apply only where the permit is silent, and most Victorian permits are not silent. The time specified in your permit governs |
The Queensland rows come from the Planning Act 2016 (Qld), sections 85 and 88, current as at 27 April 2026, and the Victorian row from the Planning and Environment Act 1987 (Vic), section 68, authorised version incorporating amendments as at 3 August 2026. Two cautions matter more than the detail in the table. First, in every one of these jurisdictions a period written into your own approval displaces the statutory default, so the document in your drawer outranks anything on this page. Second, the Victorian numbers changed on 25 November 2025 and the change is easy to misdescribe: the three year default for starting development is new rather than an uplift, because the previous version of section 68 set no default at all for starting, and the completion default moved from two years to five. The genuine two-to-three uplift applies to the default periods for permits for a use, and, like the others, it is displaced by any time specified in the permit. The transitional provision reaches permits issued before that date, but only where they had not already expired on the day it commenced.
Does the COVID lapsing extension still apply after the 2025 reforms?
Yes for some consents, and the more useful framing is that this is a closing window rather than a standing feature. The temporary provisions that extended lapsing periods during the pandemic were removed from the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act by the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Planning System Reforms) Act 2025, which received assent on 24 November 2025 and first commenced on 15 December 2025. Read the current Act today and there is no trace of them: the words COVID and 25 March 2020 do not appear anywhere in it. That is what generates the widespread and incorrect assumption that the relief is gone.
It is not gone, and the reason is a savings provision rather than a departmental policy. The amending Act inserted into the savings and transitional schedule of the principal Act a provision in these terms: "The substitution of the Act, section 4.53 does not apply to or affect a development consent in force immediately before the substitution." The statutory test is whether your consent was in force immediately before 15 December 2025. The New South Wales planning department states the same outcome in plainer language on its page for landowners, which records that the temporary provisions "have now been removed from the EP&A Act" but that they "continue to apply to development consents", and confirms that where a consent was extended under the changes "the extension is automatic and you do not need to take any action" (Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, last updated 16 January 2026).
What the relief actually did, in the department's own words, was three separate things, keyed to the window the legislation called the prescribed period, 25 March 2020 to 25 March 2022. Consents and deferred commencement consents granted in that window "will have a 5-year lapsing period that cannot be reduced". For consents granted before 25 March 2020 that had not already lapsed, "the lapsing date has been extended by 2 years", so a consent that originally had five years effectively had seven. And consents that had lapsed between 25 March 2020 and 14 May 2020 were "revived and extended by 2 years from the date they lapsed". A consent that had already lapsed before 25 March 2020 got nothing, then or now.
Now do the arithmetic, because this is the part that is not being published anywhere and it changes what a developer should do this month. The revival category is historical: two years from a lapse date in the first half of 2020 ran out around the middle of 2022. Of the two categories still doing work, the first tops out at roughly 25 March 2027 and the second at roughly 24 March 2027. The surviving COVID relief on New South Wales development consents substantially runs out around March 2027. If your site is relying on it, whether you know that or not, the runway is measured in months rather than years, and that is a materially different planning and funding position from one where a five year clock is still ticking normally. Confirming which category your consent sits in, and therefore the actual date, is the highest-value hour available on a site in this position.
One correction to a misreading that is circulating, because it points the wrong way on a question where the wrong answer is expensive. Departmental material about the reform package includes a statement that certain changes "apply to existing and future development consents". That phrase belongs to the row about historical development consents, meaning consents granted twenty-five or more years ago, and not to the lapsing row. It does not strip the extensions.
What work counts as physically commencing a development consent in NSW?
What counts is building, engineering or construction work physically carried out on the land before the lapse date, and the test is both narrower and more evidence-hungry than the phrase suggests. A New South Wales consent does not lapse if "building, engineering or construction work relating to the building, subdivision or work is physically commenced on the land to which the consent applies" before that date. The Act then leaves it to the regulation to say what does not count, and the regulation is unusually specific. Under section 96 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021, which commenced on 1 March 2022, work is not taken to have been physically commenced merely by doing one or more of six listed things. Several of the six are precisely what a developer does first when trying to demonstrate commencement. Note the asymmetry between the two lists below: the regulation says only what does not count, so the right-hand list is statutory, while the left-hand list is drawn from how the test has been applied rather than from the regulation itself.
The kind of work that is capable of counting
- Building, engineering or construction work relating to the building, subdivision or work the consent authorises
- Work carried out on the land the consent applies to, not on an adjoining parcel
- Work that is genuinely referable to the approved development rather than to site maintenance
- For development that is not building, subdivision or work, actually commencing the approved use
- Work carried out only after every condition that had to be satisfied first has in fact been satisfied
The six things the regulation says do not count on their own
- Creating a bore hole for soil testing
- Removing water or soil for testing
- Carrying out survey work, including the placing of pegs or other survey equipment
- Acoustic testing
- Removing vegetation as an ancillary activity
- Marking the ground to indicate how land will be developed
Two operational points follow, and the second is the one that most often decides a case. The restriction applies by its own terms only to consents granted on or after 15 May 2020: the regulation says "this section does not apply to a development consent granted before 15 May 2020", so an older consent is assessed on the broader test that preceded it. The split is visible in the case law. In PAG Services Pty Ltd v Byron Shire Council [2023] NSWLEC 40 an older consent was preserved on that broader test by lawful vegetation clearing that was genuinely the start of approved road works, a result the six exclusions would now make much harder to reach on a newer consent. And an unsatisfied condition is a stronger objection than an insufficient volume of work. Building work needs a construction certificate before it starts, under Part 6 of the Act, and subdivision work has its own subdivision works certificate; work carried out in breach of conditions that had to be complied with first is difficult to characterise as work relating to the approved development at all, which means a developer can point to genuine physical activity on the land and still be told the consent lapsed years earlier. That was the outcome in Fabemu (No 2) Pty Ltd v Kiama Municipal Council [2023] NSWLEC 79, where boreholes and survey work carried out in breach of prior-to-work conditions did not save the consent, and it was the position in Huang v Waterhouse [2025] NSWLEC 71, where the Land and Environment Court declared that a 2007 consent had lapsed on 26 June 2012 notwithstanding what had been done on the site.
For a lender, this is where a file either resolves quickly or becomes a research project. A clean physical commencement argument is documentary: dated photographs, contractor invoices, an engineer's or certifier's record, and a clear line from that work back to the approved scheme and forward through the conditions that gated it. The practical shape of that is usually a construction certificate obtained for an early stage of the works, the principal certifier appointed, and that early work genuinely carried out and recorded before the date. An argument assembled after the fact out of survey pegs and a cleared boundary is not the same thing, and a credit team reads the difference immediately. If the concept is load-bearing on your site, it is worth understanding what physical commencement means as a term of art before you build a funding plan on top of it.
Can you extend a development consent or a complying development certificate?
In New South Wales only in a narrow case, and only before expiry; Queensland and Victoria run broader extension routes; and a complying development certificate cannot be extended at all. New South Wales is the most restrictive of the three by a distance, and the common belief that a consent can simply be extended for a year on request is wrong in the ordinary case. Section 4.54 of the Act is titled "Extension of lapsing period for 1 year", but it opens with a condition that disposes of most enquiries: it applies where, "in granting a development consent, the consent authority reduces the period after which the consent lapses to less than 5 years". If your consent runs the full five years, that section is not available to you at all. Where it is available, the application must be made "before the period expires", and the consent authority "may grant the extension if satisfied that the applicant has shown good cause".
| What you hold | Is an extension available? | When it must be sought | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSW development consent, full 5 year period | No route under section 4.54. That section is confined to consents where the authority reduced the period below 5 years at grant | Not applicable | Nothing. The practical options are physical commencement before the date, or a fresh application |
| NSW development consent, reduced period | Yes, one year, at the consent authority's discretion on good cause shown | Before the period expires. There is no power to revive a consent that has already lapsed | One year, running from the later of the date the consent would have lapsed and the date the extension was granted |
| NSW complying development certificate | No. The certificate lapses 5 years after the date endorsed on it, and it is preserved only by physical commencement in that period | Not applicable | Nothing, and the door is expressly shut: no proceedings may be taken before a court or tribunal to extend the 5 year period |
| Queensland development approval | Yes, by extension application to the assessment manager, who may consider any matter it considers relevant | Before the approval lapses | A decision within 20 business days unless that period is extended by agreement, and the assessment manager may grant a period different from the one sought |
| Victorian planning permit | Yes, and the window is the most generous of the three, including a limited route after expiry | Before the permit expires or within 6 months afterwards; or within 12 months afterwards to complete, where the development started lawfully before expiry | A discretionary extension. Where the time is extended after expiry, the extension operates from the day the permit expired, which closes the gap |
The complying development certificate row answers a question a lot of people ask: a CDC is not a development consent for these purposes, it lapses under its own provision, and the Land and Environment Court confirmed in Chu v Inner West Council [2022] NSWLEC 14 that the COVID era amendment "did not extend the lapsing period of the CDC". Holders of a CDC got none of the relief described in the previous section.
Queensland deserves one extra line, because it is the one jurisdiction where lapsed is not always final. Separately from the extension route, the Planning and Environment Court holds a general discretion under section 37 of the Planning and Environment Court Act 2016 (Qld) to excuse non-compliance, and the Act's own transitional provisions expressly apply that discretion to a development approval that has lapsed. It is discretionary, fact-specific and never granted as of right, and whether it could reach your approval is a question for a Queensland planning lawyer rather than something to plan around.
Every one of these routes also closes at or near expiry. New South Wales has no revival power at all, Queensland requires the extension application itself before the approval lapses, and even Victoria's post-expiry window is finite and conditional. An extension is a diary problem rather than a negotiation problem, which is why it is lost by inattention far more often than by refusal. The one genuinely generous feature is the Victorian backfill: where a responsible authority does grant an extension after expiry, the statute provides that the extension operates from the day the permit expired, so the permit is not treated as having been absent in the interim. That is a genuinely useful feature and it has no equivalent in New South Wales.
Does a section 4.55 modification reset the lapse date?
No, and the belief that it does is the most expensive misconception on this topic. The intuition is understandable: a modification produces a fresh determination, a fresh notice of determination and a fresh date on a document, so it looks like a new approval. The Act forecloses it in terms. Section 4.55(4) provides that "the modification of a development consent in accordance with this section is taken not to be the granting of development consent under this Part, but a reference in this or any other Act to a development consent includes a reference to a development consent as so modified".
Read those two limbs together, because they do different work and the second is what catches people out. A modification is not a grant, so it does not start a new five year period. But the modified consent remains the same consent for every other purpose, which is exactly why a stack of recent modification paperwork feels like evidence of currency while proving nothing about it. The lapse date still runs from the date the original consent operated. A developer can hold a consent modified four times over more than a decade, with the most recent approval stamped this year, and still be holding a consent that lapsed long ago. That was the shape of the facts in Huang v Waterhouse, where four modification applications were approved between 2012 and 2024 and the underlying consent was nonetheless declared to have lapsed in 2012. The case turned on physical commencement rather than on the effect of the modifications, so it is a fact pattern rather than a ruling on this point, but as a fact pattern it is instructive: nothing about the modification history saved the consent.
This matters in a finance context for a specific and avoidable reason. A recently stamped modification is the document a borrower instinctively leads with, because it is the newest thing in the file and it looks like currency. It is the wrong document to lead with. What establishes that an approval is live is the original consent, the date it operated, any condition that deferred that date, and the evidence of physical commencement if the lapse date has passed. Presenting the modification first invites a credit team to go looking for what it does not say, which is slower and worse than answering the question directly. One point to leave open honestly: whether a modification can be used to amend a condition that imposed a reduced lapsing period is not settled, and nothing on this page should be read as asserting that it can.
What happens to your loan when a development approval lapses?
A lapsed approval can change the site's valuation basis, cut the assessed value, increase the loan to value ratio without new borrowing, pause construction drawdowns and trigger review rights under the facility. A lender reads this event differently from a planner, and the framework below sets out what changes on your facility, your valuation basis and your refinance path when an approval lapses or goes back for modification, which is the branch a developer carrying debt against the site needs and the one a planning answer does not reach.
The mechanism is valuation basis, and it is worth being precise about it because the words matter. Valuers apply a framework called highest and best use, which asks what use of the land is legally permissible, physically possible and financially feasible. A development site with a live approval is capable of being valued by reference to what the approved scheme can produce, because that scheme is legally permissible. Strip the approval out and the same parcel is valued as land, on comparable land sales, with planning risk sitting back on the buyer, because the scheme no longer is. The difference between those two numbers is what the market calls the DA premium: what a purchaser pays for assessment risk, time and holding costs somebody else has already absorbed. How large that premium is on your site is a valuation question, not a rule of thumb, and no useful general figure exists. No transaction has occurred, no money has moved and the dirt is identical, but the number that your facility is measured against has been produced on a different basis. That is why the first call is so often from a credit team rather than from a planner, and why "nothing has changed" is a reasonable thing for a developer to feel and an unreasonable thing for a lender to accept.
| What changes | Why it changes | What it looks like on your file |
|---|---|---|
| The valuation basis | An approved scheme supports a valuation referable to what that scheme can produce. Without it, the parcel is assessed as land with planning risk on the buyer | A revaluation on instruction, or a valuation qualified by approval status, often the first visible sign that the lender knows |
| The loan to value ratio | The ratio moves when the denominator moves. The balance has not changed and neither has your conduct | A ratio outside the level the facility contemplates, without a drawdown, a missed payment or any request from you |
| Covenants and undertakings | Development facilities commonly carry undertakings about maintaining approvals, notifying material changes and not allowing consents to lapse, and many carry a material adverse change clause that can pause drawdowns | A notification obligation that may already have been triggered, and a review right the lender can exercise. Read the documents before you assume |
| The construction funding path | A construction facility is underwritten against an approved scheme, a costed programme and an end value. Remove the approval and the thing being underwritten no longer exists | Drawdowns paused or a facility that cannot progress to its construction phase until approval is restored |
| Refinance appetite | Mainstream construction and development lenders price and structure around approval certainty. Planning risk is not their product | The site becomes a shorter, land-secured proposition rather than a development proposition, until re-approval lands |
| Time itself | Re-approval timelines are set by an assessment process outside your control, while the facility expiry is a fixed date in your documents | The constraint that decides the outcome is usually the gap between those two dates, rather than the planning question on its own |
The regulators, rather than broker folklore, explain why the mainstream end of the market behaves this way. The revaluation itself is not discretionary conduct: APRA's credit risk management standard, APS 220, requires the valuation of collateral to reflect fair value, taking prevailing market conditions into account, so once the approval status changes, the basis has to follow. And residential development exposures are capital-intensive for banks by design. Under APRA's Prudential Standard APS 112, effective 1 July 2025, a 100 per cent risk weight on a residential acquisition, development and construction exposure requires total debt to qualifying development costs of under 75 per cent. Where the exposure to the borrower is greater than $5 million in aggregate for a single development, it separately requires qualifying pre-sales of at least 100 per cent of the total debt. Everything else attracts 150 per cent. A site whose approval has lapsed cannot meaningfully satisfy pre-sale conditions, because there is no approved product to pre-sell.
There is a genuine and underreported tension worth naming here. In June 2026 APRA released a draft APS 112 proposing to reduce that qualifying pre-sales requirement from 100 per cent to 50 per cent of total debt, with the pre-lease limb left as a literal blank pending consultation. The draft is out for consultation, with submissions closing 7 September 2026, an indicative commencement date that APRA itself writes as 1 April 2027 in square brackets, and finalisation flagged for the second half of 2026. It is not in force and the final figure has not been settled. So the prudential setting is being loosened at the same moment the market is behaving more cautiously, and no developer should plan around a draft. Meanwhile the volume backdrop has turned: the Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded the value of total non-residential building approved falling 24.7 per cent to $8.26 billion in June 2026, seasonally adjusted, having risen sharply as recently as April, while total dwellings approved rose 7.2 per cent to 18,328 (Building Approvals, Australia, June 2026).
From our broking files
What we see on sites where approval status is in question, kept deliberately to direction rather than numbers, because a site with a maturing facility is exactly where an invented figure does damage.
- The first thing asked for is never the modification. It is the original consent, the date it operated, and any condition that deferred that date. A recently stamped modification is the wrong document to lead with and it slows the file down.
- An unsatisfied condition precedent kills more physical commencement arguments than an insufficient volume of work does. The construction certificate is the usual missing piece: where the conditions were not met before the work was done, the work tends not to help.
- The constraint that decides these files is usually a timing problem rather than a planning one: the gap between the re-approval timeline, which somebody else controls, and the facility expiry date, which is already fixed in your documents.
- Files that resolve well arrive with the planning position documented and dated: the consent, the lapse date, the commencement evidence, and a planner's written view. Files that stall arrive with a narrative and an assurance that it will be fine.
- The most common avoidable mistake is not reading the facility documents before the conversation. Notification obligations about approval status are common, and discovering one after the event is a materially worse position than disclosing it first.
- The hardest conversation, and the one worth having: when the scheme that lapsed would not be approved again today under current controls. Funding a holding position toward a re-approval that will not arrive in the form assumed makes the problem larger rather than smaller.
General information only, from broking experience, and not financial, legal or planning advice. This is not an offer, an approval, or a likelihood of approval; every application is assessed on its own facts, its security, its exit and lender policy at the time. Speak to a qualified town planner, a property lawyer, and a broker before you act.
Can you refinance a site while the approval is lapsed or being re-approved?
Sometimes, but the realistic structure is usually a shorter asset-backed facility sized against current as-is land value and repaid through a dated exit while re-approval runs. Practically, the task is to buy time on defensible terms without doing something that makes the re-approval harder, and that reframes the funding question usefully. You are not funding a development while the approval is absent, because there is no approved development to fund. You are funding a holding position across a defined period, secured on land, repaid by an event you can date, the same shape lenders underwrite as land banking. Everything a lender asks in this situation follows from that framing, and the borrowers who move quickly are the ones who arrive having already answered it.
Which lenders will consider a development site with no current DA?
The realistic market is usually shorter-tenor, asset-backed and non-bank while approval status remains unresolved, rather than mainstream construction finance. Mainstream construction and development lenders underwrite approval certainty, so a site without it moves toward the pre-development and vacant-land end of the market, which is the space private lending occupies. The measure changes from approved end value to current as-is land value, which is a smaller number and needs to be planned for rather than argued with. The exit does the heavy lifting: the lender assesses how the holding facility will be repaid and the track record of the people repaying it, whether the exit is re-approval and a move to a development facility, a sale, or a refinance once approval is restored. A dated, evidenced exit is the difference between a straightforward conversation and a slow one. Worth keeping in proportion rather than comfort: non-bank lenders remain a modest part of the system, and the Reserve Bank's own framing in its March 2026 Financial Stability Review is that "despite the strong growth in their lending, non-bank lenders still only account for 6 per cent of financial system assets, limiting their systemic importance".
A note on the wider funding market, kept in proportion. The private credit market that funds much of this activity is estimated at around $200 billion in Australia with approximately half of it real-estate-focused, according to a report prepared for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and published as REP 814 in September 2025, though the report itself presents that as a hedged third-party estimate rather than a precise measure. ASIC subsequently conducted a surveillance of 28 private credit funds and published the results in REP 820, which identified enhanced due diligence on development lending, including builder due diligence and construction risk analysis, among better practices in the sector. The relevant point for a borrower is not the size of the market but the behaviour it describes: the diligence on a development site is real, and a file that answers it directly is treated differently from one that does not. For the broader mechanics of how site and construction funding is structured, the guide to property development finance covers the ordinary case, and the piece on what a private lender reads in a site file covers what makes a submission credible. Where the trigger is the facility running out rather than the approval, the guide on a covenant breach or an interest-only expiry is the closer fit, and where a builder has walked off a live site the guide on a funder withdrawing mid-build is a different problem again.
What documents do you need for a lapsed DA refinance?
Start with the original consent, every modification, the operative and lapse dates, evidence of lawful commencement, a planner's written position, the existing facility and payout, the latest valuation, title details, sponsor financial information and a dated exit plan. A lender cannot size the loan from the modified approval alone, because the operative date and current as-is value are the two facts that control the file.
Who to call, and in what order
A town planner first, not a lender. Establishing your actual lapse date, whether physical commencement is arguable on your facts, and what a fresh application would face under current controls is the input every other decision depends on. A funding conversation held before that is a conversation about a number nobody can yet calculate.
Then a property lawyer, and your own facility documents. Whether a notification obligation has already been triggered is a question about your loan agreement, and it is better answered by reading it than by waiting. Free general guidance on obligations and options for businesses is available through business.gov.au.
Whoever you call, have the same pack in front of you. The original consent and its notice of determination, every modification determination, dated evidence of any work carried out, photographs, invoices, certifier or engineer records, your facility agreement, and the most recent valuation. The planner, the lawyer, the lender and the broker will each ask for the same documents, and the file that arrives already assembled moves first.
If the pressure has become financial rather than planning, get free help early. The Small Business Debt Helpline is on 1800 413 828 and the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007. Both are free, independent and confidential. Calling early is a sign of a well-run project, not a last resort, and it costs nothing and forecloses nothing.
What happens after you ask for a refinance?
After the first enquiry, the file normally moves through planning confirmation, preliminary loan sizing, valuation and credit, legal documentation, settlement and then the agreed exit. The sequence matters because a lender cannot sensibly value or term a planning position that has not been documented.
- Planning confirmation. A planner confirms the consent's operative date, whether it lapsed, whether lawful physical commencement preserved it, and what the current re-approval route and timing look like.
- Preliminary funding assessment. The broker or lender tests the current debt, available equity on an as-is basis, requested term, interest provision, borrower track record and proposed exit. This is an indication, not an approval.
- Valuation and credit. The lender usually obtains an as-is valuation and verifies the planning status, title, facility payout, sponsor position and exit evidence. A valuation based on the old approved scheme does not answer the current question.
- Terms, legal work and settlement. If credit is satisfied, the lender issues terms subject to conditions, completes security and priority work, obtains the existing lender's payout figure and settles against an agreed timetable.
- Exit management. After settlement, the borrower works toward the dated exit, such as re-approval and development finance, an orderly sale or another refinance. Start that exit early rather than waiting for the short facility to approach maturity.
A lapsed or modified development approval is a planning event with a finance consequence attached, and the consequence usually arrives first. Establish the real date before anything else, because it turns on when the consent operated, generally the date it was registered on the NSW planning portal, rather than when it was signed, and a deferred commencement condition can mean the clock never started. Check whether the COVID savings provision reaches your consent, and note that the relief it preserves substantially runs out around March 2027. Understand that physical commencement is a narrow test with six listed exclusions and that an unsatisfied condition defeats it more often than a small volume of work does. Do not assume a modification bought you time, because the Act says a modification is not a grant. Then read your facility documents, because the valuation basis has moved underneath a loan you have not touched. Get the planning position documented and dated first, read your loan agreement second, and only then work out what needs funding and for how long.
Key takeaway: the approval is what makes the land worth what the valuation says, so losing it moves your loan to value ratio without you borrowing a dollar, and the binding constraint is the gap between the re-approval timeline and your facility expiry.Frequently Asked Questions
Five years from the date the consent operates, unless the consent authority reduced that period when it granted the consent. The Act provides that a development consent lapses 5 years after the date from which it operates, and allows a consent authority to reduce the period, subject to a floor: a reduction cannot cause a consent to erect or demolish a building, or to subdivide land, to lapse within two years. Two traps sit under the headline number. The date the consent operates is not always the date on the letter, and where a deferred commencement condition applies, the consent lapses if the condition is never satisfied within five years of the grant or any shorter specified period.
Only in a narrow case, and only before it expires. Section 4.54 allows a one year extension, but it applies only where the consent authority reduced the lapsing period to less than five years when granting the consent. If your consent runs the full five years, that route is not available at all. Where it is available, the application must be made before the period expires and the authority may grant it if satisfied the applicant has shown good cause. There is no power to revive a consent that has already lapsed, so the date matters more than the merits: once it passes, the section has nothing left to operate on.
Five years from the date endorsed on the certificate, and it is preserved only if the development is physically commenced within that period. A complying development certificate is treated differently from a development consent in two ways that matter. It lapses under its own provision rather than the development consent provision, and the Act expressly shuts the court door: no proceedings may be taken before a court or tribunal to extend the five year period. The COVID era lapsing extensions never reached complying development certificates either, which the Land and Environment Court confirmed in Chu v Inner West Council in 2022.
Section 4.55 is the provision that allows a development consent to be modified, and no, it does not reset the lapse date. The Act says the modification of a development consent is taken not to be the granting of development consent, so no new five year period starts. The second limb of the same subsection is what confuses people: the modified consent remains the same consent for every other purpose, which is why a stack of recent modification paperwork feels like evidence that an approval is current while proving nothing about it. The lapse date still runs from the date the original consent operated. Whether a modification can amend a condition that imposed a reduced lapsing period is not settled and should not be assumed.
No, a lapsed planning approval no longer authorises the development. A Victorian building permit or a New South Wales construction certificate is a separate approval under building law and does not restore an expired planning consent. The route back is generally a fresh application assessed under the controls that apply when you lodge it. Victoria has limited post-expiry extension windows for planning permits: a request may be made within six months after expiry, or within twelve months to complete development that started lawfully before expiry. Whether either route reaches your permit is a question for a planner.
No, New South Wales planning law provides no general power to revive a development consent after it lapses. Section 4.54 is a limited pre-expiry route available only where the consent authority originally reduced the lapsing period below five years; otherwise the usual planning route is a fresh application under the controls that apply now. Before accepting that it lapsed, have a planner check the date the consent operated, any COVID-era extension, and whether lawful physical commencement preserved it. A modification approved after the original consent does not itself create a new lapse period.
Possibly, but a lapsed DA does not automatically make every loan immediately repayable. The lender's rights depend on the facility agreement and the facts. The event may trigger a revaluation, an information or notification obligation, a covenant breach, a material adverse change review, paused drawdowns or a requirement for a new plan. Read the facility promptly, get the planning position documented, and have a property lawyer advise on any default or enforcement risk. If a refinance is needed, lenders will usually size it against current as-is land value and a dated exit rather than the old approved end value.
For some consents yes, automatically, and the window is closing. The temporary provisions were removed from the Act in December 2025, but a savings provision preserves the position: the substitution of section 4.53 does not apply to or affect a development consent in force immediately before the substitution. The planning department confirms the extensions continue to apply and that no action is required to claim one. What is not being said elsewhere is the arithmetic. The revival category expired around the middle of 2022, and the two categories still doing work both run out around March 2027. If your site depends on this relief, the runway is measured in months, and confirming which category your consent falls into is urgent rather than administrative.
Sometimes, but lenders usually assess the refinance against the site's current as-is land value and a dated exit, not the lapsed scheme's approved end value. The realistic market is usually shorter-tenor asset-backed finance while approval status is unresolved. The file needs a planner's written position, the original consent and modifications, evidence of any lawful commencement, the existing facility and payout, a current valuation or value view, the re-approval or sale timeline, and a credible exit. The lender will also assess sponsor experience, serviceability or interest provision, title and priority, and the buffer between the facility term and the planning process. Every application depends on its own facts and current lender policy.
It depends on what the approval is for, and the period stated in the approval displaces the default. Under the Planning Act 2016, where no period is stated, a material change of use has six years from when the approval starts to have effect, reconfiguring a lot has four years, and other development has two years to substantially start. The four year figure quoted in a lot of older material for a material change of use is the repealed Sustainable Planning Act 2009 position, not current law. Two things catch people: for reconfiguring a lot the trigger is giving the plan to the local government for approval rather than completing the works, and an approval can separately lapse for failing to complete within a period a development condition requires.
What sources support this guide?
This guide is built on primary sources, read in full rather than summarised from secondary material. The New South Wales provisions were taken from the current consolidation of the Act itself rather than from secondary summaries or from judgments quoting it, and every figure, period and quoted phrase below was checked against the source shown beside it. Where a source does not support a claim, the claim was removed rather than softened. Two examples of that discipline: a widely repeated account of the Queensland six year period being introduced by a 2019 amendment turned out to be wrong, and a case commonly cited for the proposition that modifications do not reset a lapse date does not in fact decide that point, so the statute carries it instead.
| Source | What it supports | As at |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW), ss 4.20, 4.29, 4.53, 4.54, 4.55 and Part 6, current consolidation | The date a consent takes effect, the five year lapsing period and the reduction floor, the deferred commencement rule, the physical commencement saving, the confined one year extension and when it must be sought, the modification provision, the complying development certificate rules including the bar on court extension, and the certificate requirements that make early work lawful | Aug 2026 |
| Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Planning System Reforms) Act 2025 (NSW), No. 71 of 2025, as passed | The removal of the temporary lapsing provisions on first commencement, and the savings provision that the substitution of section 4.53 does not apply to or affect a consent in force immediately before it | Assent 24 Nov 2025, commenced 15 Dec 2025 |
| Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021 (NSW), s 96 | The six activities that do not on their own constitute physical commencement, and the exclusion of consents granted before 15 May 2020 from that restriction | Commenced 1 Mar 2022, current Aug 2026 |
| NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, changes to support businesses and landowners | The three categories of COVID era extension, keyed to the prescribed period, that the extensions are automatic and require no action, and the department's confirmation that they continue to apply despite the provisions being removed from the Act | Updated 16 Jan 2026 |
| NSW Land and Environment Court: Chu v Inner West Council [2022] NSWLEC 14; PAG Services Pty Ltd v Byron Shire Council [2023] NSWLEC 40; Fabemu (No 2) Pty Ltd v Kiama Municipal Council [2023] NSWLEC 79; Huang v Waterhouse [2025] NSWLEC 71 | That the COVID amendment did not extend the lapsing period of a complying development certificate; an older consent preserved on the broader pre-regulation test by lawful clearing that genuinely began approved works; works in breach of prior-to-work conditions failing to save a consent; and a fact pattern in which a consent was declared lapsed notwithstanding four later modifications | Feb 2022 to Jul 2025 |
| Planning Act 2016 (Qld), ss 85 to 88; Planning and Environment Court Act 2016 (Qld), s 37 | The six, four and two year currency periods and their triggers, the requirement to apply for an extension before lapsing, the assessment manager's discretion and the twenty business day decision period extendable by agreement, the separate lapsing rule for failing to complete, and the Court's discretion to deal with non-compliance, which section 37 expressly applies to a lapsed development approval | Current Aug 2026 |
| Planning and Environment Act 1987 (Vic), ss 68, 69 and 231, authorised version | That the three and five year periods are defaults subordinate to any time specified in the permit, the extension windows before expiry and after it, that a late extension operates from the day the permit expired, and the transitional provision's reach and its limits | Amendments as at 3 Aug 2026 |
| APRA, Prudential Standard APS 220, APS 112 in force, and draft APS 112 consultation released June 2026 | The requirement that collateral valuations reflect fair value; the current qualifying pre-sales and development cost tests for residential development exposures and the risk weight that applies otherwise; and the proposed reduction, its open consultation closing 7 September 2026, and its bracketed indicative commencement | In force 1 Jul 2025; draft Jun 2026 |
| ABS Building Approvals, Australia; RBA Financial Stability Review March 2026; ASIC REP 814 and REP 820 | The June 2026 approval volumes and the reversal in non-residential value; the non-bank share of financial system assets in the Reserve Bank's own framing; and the estimated size of the private credit market and the due diligence practices identified in ASIC's surveillance of private credit funds | Jun 2026, Mar 2026, Sep and Nov 2025 |
Planning legislation, regulations and departmental guidance change, and the conditions attached to your own consent, approval or permit routinely displace the standard positions summarised here. Every period on this page is a statutory default or a standard-form position, not a statement about your site. Nothing here is legal, planning, tax or financial advice, no outcome, cost, approval or timeframe is promised, and the scenarios are illustrative. Confirm the detail with a qualified town planner and a property lawyer, and on the current legislation and departmental pages, before you act.
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