Bega Valley Shire Council is advising the community of temporary disruptions to some Development Application (DA) services following a recent upgrade to Council's customer service software.
Due to technical challenges associated with the upgrade, the DA Enquiry tool (previously known as the DA Tracker) and integration with the NSW Planning Portal are currently affected.
Customers using the DA Enquiry tool can still view basic information about development applications, however some documents for DAs on public exhibition are not displaying.
To ensure continued public access, Council will publish these documents on the Public Notices section of its website for the time being.
In addition, the exhibition period for affected DAs will be extended by seven days to give the community more time to review and provide feedback.
Council is also experiencing issues with the flow of applications from the NSW Planning Portal into its internal systems.
Applicants can still upload their DAs to the Planning Portal and Council staff can access them, but the system that usually helps process them quickly is currently not working.
As a result, applicants may experience delays in the assessment of new DAs submitted since Thursday 22 May.
Council will shortly contact local development professionals to inform them of the issue and respectfully request that, where possible, new DA submissions via the Planning Portal be paused until early next week.
Council is actively working to resolve these technical issues and restore full service as quickly as possible.
The community's patience and understanding during this period is greatly appreciated.
Council will continue to keep the community updated as system functionality is restored.
