Your Application Is Still Being Verified: What to Find Out Before You Respond
Your Application Is Still Being Verified: What to Find Out Before You Respond
General information for South Australian landowners only. This is not legal, planning, surveying or financial advice, and nothing here is an opinion about your application. Route questions about which documents your proposal needs and what the Planning and Design Code requires of it to a qualified planning consultant; the plan of division and anything shown on it to a licensed surveyor; civil and stormwater detail to your engineer; statutory time periods, withdrawal and appeals to an SA planning lawyer; and fees, invoices and refunds to PlanSA and the relevant authority.
Where the application actually is right now
You lodged. Nothing has come back except a request for a document, or nothing has come back at all. The portal still does not show the application as verified, and your planning consultant is saying, reasonably enough, that assessment has not started yet.
That is the honest position. And the useful question is narrower than "how do I chase this": what is actually holding the verification, and who can tell you.
More than one thing can hold one up. The relevant authority may not be able to settle one of the verification checks from the paperwork in front of it. The prescribed period may simply have run without an outcome. Which of those you are in is not something you can read off the portal — your planning consultant can tell you which check is outstanding, and the relevant authority is the only party that can say why it has not been ticked. The point of asking is that the answer decides which of the two responses below is even available to you: feeding the check what it wants, or accepting that the set went in before it was ready and rebuilding it.
This matters more than it looks because verification and assessment read the same material. Verification asks whether the application can be assessed. Assessment asks whether the proposal is acceptable. Both work off the same drawings, the same site plan, the same description of what you propose to do. Whatever the authority could not settle from those documents at verification is still unsettled in them when assessment starts. That is why the window is worth reading rather than waiting out.
For the whole route rather than this one stage, see the SA development approval process. What to do when an application goes quiet after verification is a different problem, dealt with in delegated officer or assessment panel.
What verification is actually checking
Verification is not a receipt. On PlanSA's account, the step exists to ensure an application has been appropriately submitted and can be assessed in accordance with the Act, and it requires the relevant authority to determine the nature of the development, determine all its proposed elements, confirm it is the correct entity to assess the application, confirm the correct assessment category or categories, determine and invoice the fees, and check that expected information has been lodged, with consideration given to the Schedule 8 requirements for plans and information (source: PlanSA — Verification FAQ). The Department's guide sets out the same checks and adds that where the relevant authority is not the correct entity, it must pass the application and the documents in its possession to the entity it considers correct, and give notice through the portal (source: Guide to Development Assessment — PDI Act).
Read that list as a diagnostic rather than a procedure. Each item is a question the authority must be able to answer from your paperwork, and which one it cannot answer tells you something specific.
Two things sit behind the list. The documentation a proposal must carry is set by Schedule 8 of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (General) Regulations 2017, and PlanSA is blunt about the consequence: attaching all the relevant documentation at the point of lodgement will streamline the decision process (source: PlanSA — Development application checklist). And referrals are best identified during verification, because that is what allows fees to be generated and assessment timeframes to be determined, though PlanSA notes a referral can be resolved during assessment where it was not clear at verification, within a limited window after lodgement (source: PlanSA — Verification FAQ). A referral you did not expect is not a footnote. It is another organisation with its own view of your site.
Which check is stalling, and who has to fix it
Ask your planning consultant to tell you in one sentence which check the application is stuck on. The answer takes only a few shapes, and they are not equally serious.
The description of the development is unclear or incomplete. The authority has to determine the nature of the development and identify each element for assessment. If the form describes one thing and the drawings show another, the fix may be documentary — but whether it is, or whether the description has to change with the drawings, is for your planning consultant to advise on and the relevant authority to determine.
The expected information is not there. A site plan without the levels, a plan of division missing something a licensed surveyor has to put on it, no engineering where the proposal plainly needs it. PlanSA notes the relevant authority can request any information reasonably required to verify an application, through the request for appropriate documentation during verification (source: PlanSA — Verification FAQ). Your question is who produces the missing item, how long they need, and whether producing it properly would move the drawings. On divisions this is very often the civil and level detail: see engineering detail before land division lodgement.
The wrong entity has it. This resolves administratively, through reassignment and a portal notice. Worth knowing about mainly so you do not read it as a rejection.
The category is not obvious. Category depends on how the Planning and Design Code classifies what you propose, and the authority has to confirm the correct category or categories before it can move on. If that classification is not settled on the paperwork, it is not settled going into assessment either — which is why this is the shape to raise with your planning consultant first.
The distance between the first shape and the last is the distance between a round of chasing and a design conversation. Only your planning consultant, reading the Code against your plans, can say which you are in — and the relevant authority determines it.
The three ways out, and what each actually costs
Produce the missing thing and carry on. The default, and usually right where the gap is documentary. Note what happens later: where a relevant authority requests additional information after verification, the decision time limits are extended by the period between the request and receipt of the information, and if the applicant does not provide it within the allowed time the relevant authority may refuse the application (source: Guide to Development Assessment — PDI Act). PlanSA adds a limit that attaches at that later stage: a relevant authority can only request additional information once (source: PlanSA — Verification FAQ). That limit bites in assessment, not in the verification request you are answering now — but it is why a reply that only just clears verification is a poor investment. The same material has to survive a stage where you may get one further request and no more.
Vary the application. A relevant authority may permit an applicant to vary an application at any time before it is decided. Whether that resets the clock turns on one word: where the variations are not substantial the time limits continue to run from the original verification date and payment of fees, and where they are substantial the date of receipt of the varied application becomes the new date for decision time limits. If the authority considers the amendment changes the essential nature of the proposed development, it is treated as a new application with a new lodgement date (source: Guide to Development Assessment — PDI Act). Whether a change you are contemplating is substantial in that sense is for your planning consultant to advise on and the relevant authority to determine, not something to read off a drawing.
Withdraw and rebuild. Applications may be withdrawn, and it is the applicant's responsibility to notify the relevant authority. The refund of lodgement or assessment fees is entirely at the discretion of the relevant authority, usually depending on the extent of assessment work already undertaken (source: Guide to Development Assessment — PDI Act). PlanSA says the same from the applicant's side: an applicant who withdraws after paying may be due a refund, and a refund is at the discretion of the relevant authority (source: PlanSA — Finance, fees and charges FAQ). "May" and "discretion" are the operative words. Do not build the decision on money coming back.
Drift is not free either. The Regulations carry both an applicant-requested hold, where time the applicant takes is not counted in the time within which the authority must decide, and a power to lapse an aged application on notice, with no entitlement to a refund (source: Guide to Development Assessment — PDI Act). Neither is a mechanism to operate off the back of an article.
What to put in writing this week
Four questions, quoting your application ID, in an email rather than a phone call:
Which of the verification checks is outstanding on this application?
What specific document or information is required to complete it, and in what form?
Have any referral bodies been identified at this stage?
Is any fee unpaid or uninvoiced that is holding verification?
Then one question to your own side, which owners skip: if we produce this properly, does anything on the drawings move? If nothing moves, the answer is usually to produce it. If something does move, the question has stopped being about a document: it is whether to vary or to rebuild, and which of those is open to you — and what each would do to your lodgement — is for your planning consultant and the relevant authority, not for a general article. The timing point is the one worth carrying: that question is cheaper to ask now than after assessment has begun.
Keep the dates. The relevant authority must record on the portal, for each application, matters including the date it was lodged and the date on which it was verified (source: Guide to Development Assessment — PDI Act). Those two dates are the start of your own timeline. Where this stage sits in the overall program is set out in how long subdivision takes in SA.
On the next one: verification is bought before lodgement
For complex projects in specified parts of metropolitan Adelaide, PlanSA runs a pre-lodgement service that is free, voluntary and confidential, and that advises proponents on submitting a complete application and facilitates pre-lodgement agreements that cut out the need for agency referrals (source: PlanSA — Pre-lodgement service). Eligibility is limited by location and by the type and scale of development, and the criteria are published on that page — check them rather than assuming.
For everyone else the discipline is duller and works anyway: settle the description of the development before the drawings are finalised, have the consultant walk the Schedule 8 expectations against what each professional is actually producing, and identify likely referrals before lodgement rather than during verification. Who holds that sequence together is covered in who manages your DA.
Frequently asked questions
Does a slow verification mean the whole approval will be slow? That is not a call anyone can make from the outside, and this article does not try to. What is mechanical is that verification and assessment read the same documents, so whatever could not be settled from them at verification is still there when assessment begins. What that means for your application is a question for your planning consultant.
Can the council keep asking me for more documents? During verification, the authority can request information reasonably required to verify the application. After verification, PlanSA's guidance is that a relevant authority can only request additional information once, and that for some deemed-to-satisfy developments — those comprising only certain residential elements such as dwellings, alterations and additions, or an associated outbuilding, garage, verandah, pergola or pool — further information cannot be requested during assessment at all (source: PlanSA — Verification FAQ). Which applies to yours is for your consultant to confirm.
Should I withdraw and lodge again? That depends on whether producing the missing material would change the proposal, and on what a variation would do to the decision timeframes — questions for your planning consultant, with the fee consequences confirmed with the relevant authority. Any refund is discretionary.
Is verification the same as approval? No. Verification confirms the application can be assessed. Planning consent and, on a division, land division consent are separate decisions, and development approval is what follows once the required consents are in place.
Who does what, and where Cyberate PM sits
The relevant authority verifies the application and determines it. Your planning consultant advises you on the Code, the documents your proposal needs and whether a change is substantial. Your licensed surveyor produces the plan of division; your engineer the civil detail; your lawyer advises on the statutory provisions, withdrawal and any appeal.
Cyberate PM does none of those things. We are engaged by the owner and we coordinate: one channel to the relevant authority, the consultants' outstanding items sequenced so a request is answered completely the first time, and the choice between responding, varying and rebuilding put in front of you as a decision rather than left to drift.
If your application is sitting in verification and you want the documents, the consultants and the decision held in one place, talk to us.
Written August 2026. Summarised from publicly available material at the time of writing. Statutory requirements, forms, fees and time periods are set by legislation and can change; confirm the current position with PlanSA, your relevant authority and your own advisers.
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