1,523 Childcare Centre DAs in 12 Months: Where Operators Are Building, and How Long Approval Really Takes

Childcare is one of the few property classes where the tenant demand story, the government funding story and the planning story all point the same direction, which is why developers keep asking the same two questions: where is everyone building centres, and how long does approval actually take?

Both questions have answers sitting in the application record. Our database tracks 848,662 development applications across more than 365 Australian councils, and 6,518 of them are childcare-related. This piece works through the 1,523 lodged in the 12 months to July 2026. All figures come from our database snapshot of 13 July 2026.

NSW carries two thirds of the pipeline

NSW lodged 973 of the 1,523 applications, just under 64%. Victoria (206), South Australia (149) and Queensland (136) form the second tier, with WA (48) behind them.

The NSW figure is also growing on stable coverage: the same NSW councils recorded 818 childcare-related lodgements in the previous 12-month window, so the current year is up about 19%. Victoria's jump (69 to 206) partly reflects our own council coverage expanding during the period, so we read the NSW number as market signal and treat the Victorian one with more caution.

The busiest childcare councils are the family growth corridors

The list is dominated by exactly the LGAs you would predict if you started from young-family demographics: Blacktown, the Central Coast, Casey, Logan, Liverpool, Campbelltown and Camden are the growth corridors where subdivisions are still being cut and the school-age population is compounding. If you read our granny flat data piece, the overlap in the two council lists is striking, and it is not a coincidence: both products chase the same young-family belts.

Melbourne City at number two is the interesting outlier. That is not house-and-land family growth; it is centres going into mixed-use towers and office conversions to serve CBD workers, a fundamentally different site-selection problem on smaller, noisier, more contested lots.

The trend held up through 2025 and is running again in 2026

Monthly lodgements stepped up visibly from mid-2025: October 2025 (167) and November 2025 (161) are the two biggest months in the series, and 2026 has been running consistently above the same months in 2025. January dips are seasonal. As with the state table, some of the increase is our council coverage growing, which is why the NSW-only like-for-like figure of +19% is the cleanest single signal.

The number nobody publishes: 102 days

Of the childcare-related applications in our database that were decided in the last two years and carry both a lodgement and a decision date, the NSW median time to decision was 102 days, from a sample of 1,406 decided applications.

For context, the median granny flat DA in NSW comes back in 36 days. A childcare centre takes nearly three times as long, and the reasons are structural: childcare DAs draw objections (traffic and noise are the two standard battlegrounds), they trigger referrals, and they often need amended plans mid-assessment. Our smaller interstate samples point the same general direction: Queensland's median was 58 days across 27 decided applications, and the ACT's 57 across 17, both too small to lean on hard but consistent with councils moving faster than the NSW metro belt.

Two honesty notes on the 102 days. First, it is a median of applications that reached a recorded decision: withdrawn applications and the ones that die in request-for-information purgatory are not in the sample, so the real expected timeline for a contested site is worse, not better. Second, the clock is only the council assessment. Site acquisition, design, the acoustic and traffic reports, and the separate National Quality Framework service approval to actually operate all sit outside it.

One more observed pattern worth knowing: NSW application records in our data include complying development certificates for centre-based child care in some LGAs, issued in as little as days rather than months where a conforming design met the code. Blacktown, Ryde and Georges River all show recent examples. The pathway is design-constrained and site-constrained, but where it fits, the timeline difference is dramatic.

What the cost data shows, with a small-sample caveat

Councils record a cost of development for only a fraction of childcare applications, and the 55 applications in our last-two-years sample that carry a plausible figure show a median of A$585,252, with the middle half of projects running from roughly A$232,000 to A$1.5 million. Read that as the spread between fit-outs and conversions at the low end and new-build centres at the top, not as a construction cost benchmark. We publish it because nobody else does, with the sample size attached.

How to use the DA record before you buy a site

The application record answers questions that demographics reports cannot:

1. Is the council actually approving centres? The table above tells you where applications are flowing. Clicking into an LGA on the DA map shows you every live and decided childcare application, what got approved, and what is still stuck.
2. What is nearby, and how contested was it? A suburb with three recent childcare approvals within a kilometre is a different proposition from one with none, in both directions: proven pathway, but also incoming supply.
3. Is the catchment already full, and would this specific lot survive assessment? The competition decides the investment before the planning screen does. Our childcare site decision memo leads with the catchment, all from data we already hold: every approved service within 2 km with its NQS rating and places, who rates above and below the standard and on which quality areas, the applications coming in behind them (our own records), and the suburb's children, growth and income (ABS Census). It then adds the school run and how parents would drop off (nearby schools with ICSEA and enrolments, station, buses, parking), and only then the 19-constraint planning screen read for a childcare use, closing with a strengths-and-watch-outs verdict. A$1,000, one business day. On our sample site in Craigieburn the memo found 21 existing services holding 1,339 approved places within 2 km against roughly 16,700 children aged 0-14, which is exactly the kind of thing you want to know before the option deed, not after.

If you operate on the quality side rather than the property side, our NQS governance analysis looks at what happens after the doors open.

FAQ

How many childcare centres are approved in Australia each year? No complete national figure exists, because approval records are scattered across hundreds of councils and some fast-track pathways barely surface publicly. What we can measure: 1,523 childcare-related development applications were lodged in the 12 months to July 2026 across the 365+ councils we track, and 973 of them were in NSW.

Which council has the most childcare centre applications? Blacktown City Council in western Sydney, with 63 childcare-related DAs in the 12 months to July 2026, followed by Melbourne City Council (54) and the Central Coast (53).

How long does a childcare centre DA take to approve? Among applications in our database decided in the last two years, the NSW median was 102 days from lodgement to decision (1,406 decided applications). That is the council assessment clock only, and applications that stall or get withdrawn are not in the figure, so budget conservatively.

Why do childcare DAs take so much longer than residential ones? They are contested. Neighbour objections concentrate on drop-off traffic and outdoor play noise, both of which trigger specialist reports and often amended plans. A median NSW granny flat DA, by comparison, comes back in 36 days.

What does it cost to build a childcare centre? Council-recorded development costs in our data show a median of A$585,252 across 55 recent applications, ranging from roughly A$232,000 to A$1.5 million for the middle half. The sample is small and skews toward projects where councils record costs, so treat it as indicative only.

Can I check a specific site before committing? Yes. Our childcare site decision memo runs on any Australian address: the catchment first (existing services within 2 km with NQS ratings and places, who rates above and below the standard, incoming applications, and the suburb's demand and growth), then the school run and drop-off access, then a 19-constraint planning screen read for a childcare use, closing with a strengths-and-watch-outs verdict. Memo and PDF back within one business day. It is honest about what it does not cover: acoustic and traffic studies, demand modelling and the hiring market.