There were 79 development applications in Dubbo given the tick of approval for the month of March, worth an estimated value of $16.5 million. Approvals this month include 18 single dwellings and one for multi-unit housing.

It’s 20 more applications than March the year before.

Council director environmental services Melissa Watkins said development was holding steady.

“I think the biggest change we’ve seen would be the multi-unit housing developments, there’s also quite a lot of commercial development in the pipeline and being approved at the moment,” she said.

While the numbers were high, Ms Watkins said it could soon change.

“I think residentially in the next few months we’ll see a flattening out of numbers, there’ll be a slight increase before probably June.”

For the current financial year to date there have been just shy of 600 developments approved by council. In total they’re worth almost $150 million.

Meanwhile, in Wellington there were five applications approved during March, compared to seven the year before.

Overall however, development in Wellington is in front of the previous financial year. There have been 60 developments during the past eight months, slightly higher than the 53 for the same time period the year before. This year’s applications have an estimated value of $3.8 million.

Three of the applications in Wellington were for dwellings, while two were for garages or carports.

There were 71 development applications, including complying development certificates, approved in Dubbo in February, with an estimated value of $26 million.  In January there were 49 development applications approved and in December 2016 58 development applications were given the green light.

Last month Ms Watkins said the number of development applications was tracking quite well and it was a positive outlook on the Dubbo economy.

Across NSW development has been on the rise. While the statewide statistics for building approvals in March have not yet been released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the previous months indicated an upward trend.

In February the number of dwellings approved by councils rose by 2.5 per cent, following two months of increased figures.

The total number of dwelling units approved in Queensland fell by 0.7 per cent for the same month. Dwelling approvals have fallen in Queensland for more than a year, according to the ABS data.