In this 10-episode video series, Colin Fragar, our founder and CEO, shares the top ten things to know about achieving council approval.
Click on the “Play” button below to watch Episode 2 now:
Or for those that prefer to read, here is a transcript of the video…
Hey guys, Colin Fragar here from Council Approval Group. I’m in the studio and just finished recording a whole bunch of videos. How cool is this? I really want to make the council approval process fun and also successful for you.
So have you ever been blindsided by something? I just love that expression blindsided. You just kind of imagine that you, out of nowhere, just get smacked from the side. And whatever happens, you don’t be blindsided by the council. That’s probably going to be a very expensive and embarrassing process.
What we have done is created a guide to achieving council approval. And if you have not grabbed a copy, we recommend you get one from our web site. This is Your Ultimate Guide to Council Approval. In here is a whole bunch of tips. And this is what I’m going through in this series of videos to help you to avoid some of the blind spots in dealing with the council approval process. We’ve done thousands of projects and I’ve seen this happen a lot and I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to you.
Recap Episode #1
The very first one, if you haven’t watched the video already, is to spend money on plans before you know which rules apply to your property. Because what that means is that you may settle on a project which isn’t quite as good, not the highest and best use for your property. For example, you may settle on a studio or granny flat and we could have got your subdivision. That might be a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay, so that’s the first one.Mistake #2: Forging Ahead Without Knowing the Likelihood of Success
The purpose of this video, the second blindside is that you spend money on plans before knowing the probability of success. So people jump in, they spend money with an architect or a draftsman, which we have in our team and we can certainly offer. But what we say is, instead of going straight to the design process, let’s take a step back and make sure that we understand the probability of success of achieving council approval.We don’t want you going down a rabbit hole spending months and thousands of dollars worth of money only to turn up to Council and it gets refused or rejected.And you got to go, you turn around with the tail behind your legs and you got to start all over again. Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘If I had 10 hours to to cut down a tree, I’d spend nine hours sharpening my axe.’ The principle here is you’re better off to take a little bit of time at the beginning to make sure you’re on the right track and what we recommend to people is a Preliminary Planning Assessment.
Get Started Achieving Council Approval
If you want to go ahead, book in an appointment, go to councilapproval.com.au. Find the appointment button there and book time that’s convenient with you. What happens then is the consultant will give you a call at the appointed time. Then you’ll be able to share with them what you’re trying to achieve. Maybe you’ve got a property in mind and you just want to know what you can do with it. Or maybe you’ve got a specific project you want to achieve. So book in a time, they’ll talk to you. And then they’ll be able to then make a clear roadmap for you going forward so you don’t get blindsided by council. You won’t spend money when you shouldn’t, when you don’t even know what the chances of success achieving council approval are.Hopefully that’s helpful. I’m really trying to be really helpful and share my heart here. My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in video number three.