Site plans for Shellharbour, New South Wales: drawn in minutes
Need a site plan for a shed, patio, carport, deck, pool or granny flat in Shellharbour? Site plans and assessments in minutes, drawn over the real lot.
Towns and suburbs in Shellharbour include Shellharbour, Albion Park, Warilla, Oak Flats and Flinders.
Building in Shellharbour
Shellharbour keeps detached garages, carports and sheds modest: each has a height limit and a floor area cap, and anything taller or bigger must be attached to the house and designed as part of it. A shed takes the same setbacks as a garage.
Up to two street-facing garages may sit slightly forward of the house, with doors no wider than half that side of it, and any further garage sits behind the first two. Single-storey parts of a house keep a front building line, two-storey parts sit further back, and pergolas, verandahs and decks may come slightly forward. Two-storey parts keep slightly wider side gaps, and one side may need room for car access.
Homeowners in Shellharbour, Albion Park, Warilla or Oak Flats lodge applications with Shellharbour City Council through the NSW Planning Portal.
What we hold for Shellharbour
For Shellharbour we hold the council’s own rules for sheds, garden sheds, garages and carports, and its current fee schedule.
At each lot we check the state’s mapping for flood, bushfire, landslide, heritage and native vegetation. We also read the council’s application register for past applications on the lot.
Last checked
How approval works in New South Wales
In New South Wales a small structure goes through the planning pathway it fits. Exempt development needs no approval and nothing is lodged, but the structure has to meet every exempt standard and the land must not be excluded from it. Complying development is a fast approval: a complying development certificate from a registered certifier or the council, for work that meets the state's complying standards. Anything else needs a development application to the council, assessed against its local environmental plan and development control plan. The certifier or the council reads the site plan for the structure's size and its distance to each boundary and the house, and for exempt work the plan is the owner's own record. Size, height, distance to each boundary and the land itself decide the pathway, as per the State Environmental Planning Policy (Exempt and Complying Development Codes) 2008.
Drawing the plan
Type the property address, the lot’s real boundaries load from official land records in New South Wales, and you place the structure over the aerial view. The plan prints to scale with boundary lengths, setback distances, a north arrow, a legend, a site coverage table and a title block, as the site plan for a DA or a complying development certificate.
What a certifier in Shellharbour will ask you
Is the carport open, or closed in?
How open the carport is changes whether it needs a fire rated wall near the boundary, and a roller door or a later enclosure reopens the question. A shed never takes the open carport exemption.
Is the lot in an overlay, and what is the zoning?
A flood, bushfire, heritage or character overlay can bring a planning approval on top of the building approval, and the zone decides which of the council’s rules apply. The mapped overlays are read at the lot as the structure goes on the plan.
How close to the boundary can it go?
The distance to each boundary decides whether the work can stand where it is drawn or needs an application for a closer position, and close to a side or rear boundary the fire rules apply too. The sheet dimensions the distance from the structure to every boundary.
Who gives the approval, and who draws the plan?
The certifier or the council gives the approval, and the site plan can come from the builder, the supplier, a drafter or the owner, as long as it is clear and to scale. A surveyor comes in where the position of a boundary on the ground has to be fixed.
The figures for your own lot are read in a minute, from its address.
Every question a certifier asks is on the New South Wales page.
Changes on the way
Rule changes announced for Shellharbour, for New South Wales and for the whole country, the state and national lines in full on the New South Wales page, each with the page that says so and the day we read it.
In the next 90 days
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Codes SEPP and the complying development variations pathway
Source planningportal.nsw.gov.au, read
Later
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National Construction Code 2025
Source nsw.gov.au, read
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ABCB Housing Provisions 2025 (with NCC 2025)
Source abcb.gov.au, read
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AS 1926.1:2024 Swimming pool safety barriers
Source ncc.abcb.gov.au, read
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NCC 2025 Housing Provisions Part 10.8
Source ncc.abcb.gov.au, read
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NCC 2025 Housing Provisions Part 9.2
Source ncc.abcb.gov.au, read
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NCC 2025 Volume Two Part H6, Specification 42 and Housing Provisions Section 13
Source ncc.abcb.gov.au, read
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NCC 2025 Volume Two Part H8
Source ncc.abcb.gov.au, read
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National Construction Code, residential pause
Source treasury.gov.au, read
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National Construction Code, next edition
Source abcb.gov.au, read
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No date yet
Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026
Source nsw.gov.au, read
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No date yet
Planning for Bush Fire Protection 2026
Source rfs.nsw.gov.au, read
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No date yet
Standard and model conditions of consent (explanation of intended effect)
Source planningportal.nsw.gov.au, read
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No date yet
Statewide low rise housing code and targeted assessment (discussion paper)
Source planningportal.nsw.gov.au, read
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No date yet
AS 3959:2018 Construction of buildings in bushfire prone areas
Source store.standards.org.au, read
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No date yet
AS 4678-2002 Earth retaining structures
Source store.standards.org.au, read
What we changed for Shellharbour
The rules we hold for Shellharbour, each brought up to date from the page it names, newest first. The summary above reads from them.
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Council rules
Read from Shellharbour: DCP 2013 consolidated with Amendment 6, 11 September 2026
Council notices
No story for Shellharbour yet.
The sources we read for Shellharbour
2 sources read for Shellharbour, the newest on , each below with the day it was last read.
Planning schemes and codes
Fees
Follow Shellharbour in a feed reader: www.rapidsiteplan.au/site-plan/shellharbour/feed.xml. Every council and state has one, listed on rule changes by council and state.
RapidSiteplan is design software: you confirm details, measure on site and your certifier or council makes the approval decision. The rule above is general information, not building or legal advice. Boundaries shown are indicative, a surveyor is recommended where exact positions matter.
Serving postcodes 2527 and surrounds.
Plans for the job
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