Bring the subdivision certificate check forward to practical completion
Most of what is checked at subdivision certificate stage is knowable before the last works are finished, but the check begins only afterwards -- at the point of maximum holding cost.
Steps this would change
Rationale
The subdivision certificate lands last and costs most. A completed townhouse development is carrying full finance, cannot settle, and cannot hand over, while a check runs that is largely documentary.
The resequencing question is specific and answerable: which components of that check actually require the works to be finished, and which are reviews of plans, easements, certificates and contributions that could be substantially completed weeks earlier? If it is mostly the latter, the elapsed time is a sequencing artefact rather than a necessity.
This is filed as an idea rather than a proposal because we do not yet have the evidence to say which components are which. It needs a practitioner.
What is being traded away
A pre-check that has to be redone because the works changed is worse than no pre-check -- it consumes council time twice and creates an expectation that the certificate is a formality. There is also a risk that developers treat an early conditional review as approval and hand over prematurely.
Any version of this reform needs the early review to be explicitly provisional, and needs council to be resourced for the double handling it will sometimes cause.