The Government have have advised that assessment times for development applications have officially halved. You might think that this is great news – but there is a conga line of sceptics. Urbanised is going to join that line. If there is a material drop in development applications by more than 20% (there has been a 59% fall in completions) then it could be reasonably expected that approval times will fall by a similar quantum with a given level of staff. If Councils, choose not to accept a DA for whatever reason at the counter then the clock never starts and if more are rejected, they will distort the outcome. On the ground there is no demonstrable acceleration of approval activity – as a matter of fact we are seeing the opposite.  Rather than being the planning cheer squad, if the times reflect lower activity in the industry it should be grounds for significant concern. Without any structural reform in the planning system and no significant investment in labour or technology it is probably a function of a cliff fall in industry activity rather than step change breakthroughs in efficiency.