Up to four grouped houses or apartments could be built without development approval under a package of planning changes the Cook Government announced on Tuesday. Where a proposal meets planning standards, only a building permit would be needed.
That exemption currently applies to single houses only. Western Australia is the only state with a clear-cut planning exemption of that kind, and the State Government says extending it to other forms of housing puts WA further ahead of the rest of the country.
Also in the package is a new deadline at the subdivision stage. Local governments would have 28 days to respond to proponents after receiving engineering drawings for road design and waterways, a stage of the process where applicants have long waited without a statutory timeframe.
The rest is a mix of legislative, regulatory, policy, and practice changes aimed at the slow points in the system. More local planning and region scheme amendments would be able to progress concurrently, which the State Government estimates could save around 12 months in approval timeframes. Structure planning and subdivision practices would be streamlined, condition clearances sped up, and the Western Australian Planning Commission would gain stronger powers to modify, progress, or cancel structure plans.
“By expanding opportunities to progress local and region scheme amendments concurrently, we will significantly reduce the time it takes to move from rezoning to subdivision and development,” Planning and Lands Minister John Carey said.
Carey said the package would not lower the bar for what gets built. “We’re also pursuing exemptions and shorter approval timeframes for lower-risk residential developments, without relaxing standards,” he said.
What it means for councils
Development approval is the point at which local governments apply their own planning policies, including things like tree retention rules which a number of Perth councils have adopted in recent years. WALGA’s model tree retention policy, revised in early 2026, works by requiring development approval for tree-damaging activity on private land. The release doesn’t say how policies like that would apply to developments that no longer need approval.
Perth has the lowest tree canopy cover of any Australian capital city, and a WALGA analysis rated WA as having the weakest protections for trees on private land of any state in the country. Most infill development in WA is medium density, with duplex and triplex projects replacing single homes and clearing the mature canopy that came with them.
The local government sector has not yet responded to Tuesday’s announcement. When the State Government widened the authority of development assessment panels in 2023, WALGA argued the changes would erode local government’s role in planning.
