The LDPM data provides an outline of the performance of the NSW planning system and information on local and regional development determined by councils, private certifiers and joint regional planning panels.

Councils provide the Department with information on each DA and Section 96 modification application (S96) determined by council, and on CDC's determined by council or private certifiers. This is supplemented by information from joint regional planning panels. However, the majority of the data continues to come from councils.

The department issued councils with a template for data and explanatory material including data definitions. Councils generally extract their information from DA tracking databases or, for smaller country councils, DA registers.

Data analysis was undertaken by the Department using standard calculations (for a detailed explanation, refer to the "Data Quality Statement" tab of the Summary Data attached as a resource to this data set ).