Council Approval for Commercial, Retail & Light Industrial Projects

What we handle

Commercial and retail: cafes and restaurants, takeaway and food premises, retail shops, offices and co-working, gyms and recreation facilities, medical and allied health suites, beauty and hairdressing salons, childcare, and places of public worship. New fitouts, changes of use, extensions to existing premises, and signage.

Light industrial: new warehouse and industrial unit developments, industrial and strata subdivision, workshops and service trades premises, change of use of an existing industrial building, extensions and mezzanines, hardstand and yard works, and vehicle repair or fleet facilities.

Two different risk profiles, one first step

For a commercial or retail fitout: the pre-lease check is the highest-value thing we do

Before you sign, three things need confirming: that the zoning permits your intended use at all, that the premises has an existing approved use and what it is, and whether any prior condition of consent restricts hours, capacity or ventilation in a way that affects you. We have seen operators sign a lease for a space that could not be used as a food premises without works the landlord would not fund - that conversation is much better to have before the lease than after.

A cafe, restaurant or takeaway also needs to satisfy the environmental health and food safety framework alongside the planning approval - construction requirements, mechanical exhaust, grease arrestor, waste storage, and food business notification. EHUP holds both capabilities, so the health requirements are designed into the fitout at the same time as the planning documentation, rather than handed back to you halfway through.

For a light industrial project: feasibility comes before documentation

Because the capital at risk is larger, the order of work is deliberately inverted from a standard residential job: instead of documenting first and discovering constraints later, we establish permissibility and the achievable development envelope first, in writing, and only then commit to a documentation programme. That written feasibility is also the document you can hand to a financier or a joint venture partner.

A use can be permissible with consent in the zone and still be undeliverable on the particular site

• because the access geometry will not accept the vehicle types the use generates, because the parking rate cannot be met, or because a contamination history requires remediation that changes the economics. Permissibility is a half-hour check. Feasibility is the work that actually protects you.

The report stack, and who owns the gaps

On larger commercial and industrial projects, the traffic consultant's assumed vehicle movements have to match the acoustic consultant's noise model, which has to match the operational description in the planning report, which has to match what the architect drew. When nobody owns those interfaces, council finds the contradiction and issues a request for further information. We hold that coordination role across every report the project needs.

Council areas

We work across Sydney's commercial strips and industrial-heavy council areas alike - Liverpool, Blacktown, Fairfield, Cumberland, Penrith, Bankstown and Parramatta among them - as well as the balance of the metropolitan area.