Subdivision Certifiers and Subdivision Certification

A Subdivision Certifier, like SubCerts, are people that have been Registered with NSW Fair Trading and are able to issue a range of certificates that are required during the subdivision of land.

Historically, if you wanted to subdivide your land you would go to Council, get a Development Consent, or commonly referred to as a DA, and then get your Construction Certificate (or CC), now called a Subdivision Works Certificate (SWC) and do all the required works to be able to subdivide your block. Once all the works are complete you would then go back to Council to get your Subdivision Certificate (SC). Once you had your subdivision certificate, your surveyor would take this NSW Land and Registry Service (NSW LRS) to register your lots, which can then be sold.

So as a brief recap:

1. Council - Development Consent (or DA)

2. Council - Subdivision Works Certificate (or SWC)

3. Council - Subdivision Certificate (or SC)

In the mid 2000’s, to speed up the development approval pathway, the NSW government allowed certain engineers, that could demonstrate they had the required education, expertise and experience to start issuing Subdivision Works Certificates (SWC) on behalf of Councils. This meant developers now had the option of using Registered Subdivision Certifiers to issue their Subdivision Works Certificates, which also had the added benefit of reducing the workloads on Councils and allowing them to focus on Development Applications and Subdivision Certificates.

So the pathway now looked like this:

1.Council - Development Consent (or DA)

2.Subdivision Certifier or Council - Subdivision Works Certificate (or SWC)

3.Council - Subdivision Certificate (or SC)

In 2018 the NSW government further assisted developers and Councils alike by releasing Part 3B - Low Rise Housing Diversity Code as part to the State Environmental Planning Policy (Exempt and Comply Development Codes) 2008. This now meant you could now get a Complying Development Certificate (or CDC), which combined both the Development Consent and Construction Certificate, for Low-Rise style developments like Dual Occupancies, Duplexes, Multi-Dwelling Housing (Terraces) and Manor Homes and then subdivide these developments via comply development certificate (CDC).

This meant for dual occupancy (duplexes) type developments your approval pathway could look like this:

1.Registered Certifier – Building and Subdivision CDC

2.Registered Certifier – Occupation Certificate and Subdivision Certificate

The biggest thing to note about the above is there is no need to go to Council for any consents or certificates, which provides a much faster approval process by using a Subdivision Certifier and Complying Development Certificates.

So Subdivision certifiers, like SubCerts, are suitably registered certifiers that can provided the certificates required for your subdivision development……depending on the type of development and the certificate you are after!

In a following post I will go deeper into when and where you can use a Subdivision Certifier, like SubCerts, for your Subdivision Certification needs.

I note I have not discussed Strata Subdivision within this content as I will be making a separate strata post which will be released shortly. Make sure you vist our website, www.subcerts.com.au and follow SubCerts on LinkedIn to ensure you don’t miss out on future content.

Craig Hopfe, The author of this content, is a Subdivision Certification specialists having run Subdivision Development Assessment teams, including Town Planners, Development Engineers, Construction Engineers and Subdivision Assessment Officers, in Councils for over a decade and been responsible for the review and issue of Development Consents, Subdivision Works Certificates and Subdivision Certificates for all scale of development.