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Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) in planning
Sustainable design for medium-scale developments
We use sustainable design assessments to determine where environmentally sustainable design has been carefully considered and planned in your medium-scale development.

You can view helpful information to work out whether your development is medium or large-scale.

The plan must:

  • demonstrate how the 10 key sustainable design categories have been addressed
  • identify relevant sustainability targets and performance standards
  • document how targets and performance standards will be achieved.

You will need...

  1. A sustainable design assessment that is based on:
  • Associated appendices demonstrating sustainability initiatives depending on your commitments using tools such as STORM JV3 FirsRATE5 NatHERS etc (or equivalent).
  • A set of plans that shows every environmentally sustainable design element mentioned in the sustainable design assessment.

    • While you can prepare the paperwork yourself we strongly recommend you seek help from a qualified sustainability professional.

    When to submit

    You should submit your sustainable design assessment with your planning permit documents.

    Advice for completing the paperwork

    Always use very clear and definite language when describing the sustainability elements of the design.

    For example:

    • You should say ‘all lighting in dwellings will be energy efficient LED lighting’.
    • Don’t say ‘energy efficient light fittings will be used where practical’.