NOPTA approval window

Sorry all re-posting as a new thread because don't want it to just disappear behind other posts!

There seems to be a lot of nerves at the moment as to when the approval is coming (maybe shown by the drop in price this last week) however we are still within our approval window and are currently right in the hot zone for a decision to be made. Hopefully, the following information will help calm the nerves of some holders.

Remember estimates are estimates and are just a guess on when we might hear something from NOPTA. There is plenty going on slowing things down in the world (i.e covid). As such, I would not be worrying if the approval is taking longer than one might expect or longer than other applications. If NOPTA was going to decline the PEP-11 application for whatever reason they would just do it (and we would see it updated on the NOPTA website). If there were issues with the application, they would request further information again. They would not leave it in limbo with no response. Just because we are waiting does not mean either outcome is more or less likely (it just means we are getting closer to an outcome).

TLDR
When making time frames there are always going to be bumps in the road/tasks taking longer than expected. This is the case even in the best made plans.

A prediction for approval could be between 10/10/20 - 10/11/20. This is based on other applications on NOPTAs website and PEP-11s historical applications. Compared to historical approvals of PEP-11 we are not overdue yet as a number of previous approvals took longer than this one (and were successful!).

Remember its a crazy world at the moment, covid and John Barilaro going on leave likely have slowed down the decision making process a little, we shouldn't throw our toys just yet. I ask the question "With all that is going on in the world why shouldn't this approval take longer than all the other PEP-11 approvals before it?"

Shout out to @Flambeauas all of this work is his. I thought it would be beneficial for everyone to collect it all up and see how the different dates compare/add some reasoning to it all.

First Estimate:
The most recent prediction for a decision made by Flambeau was 10/10/20 to 18/10/20. This was based on days spent in “Joint Authority for decision”.

I am not sure if there were requests for further information after entering the joint decision stage for the other approvals in the image above but for arguments sake lets add the time that the PEP-11 approval sat in “Further information required” to Flambeaus prediction above. Doing this makes sense if we treat this time as dead time while NOPTA waits for information before they can further their decision-making process.

I believe the status changed to “Further information required” on 24/07/20 (this was the earliest mention of it I could find in the forums but if somebody knows if it was earlier please let me know)and was in this stage until 7/8/20. This means that it was in “Further information required for 11 workdays (~2 weeks). If we add these two weeks on to the approval it puts the above prediction to somewhere between 26/10/20 and 2/11/20.

Second Estimate:
The second approval estimate was based on historical PEP-11 changes and previous approvals. Please see the image below.

This estimate is based on the longest approval times for previous applications. We have obviously already passed that first prediction but the second two are a possibly.

If used as an estimate we see a possible approval date as late as the 10th of November. For the record as of the 11/10/20 we are currently at 287 days since the date that the application was lodged (including weekdays which the above graph also includes).

What does this all mean?
If we look at all these predictions it should be clear that we are pretty close to a decision from NOPTA. If we take both of Flambeaus predictions and pad them out a little to include the extra time in "Further Information Required" our window for approval looks to be anytime within the next month (10/10/20 to 2/11/20). However we do not grasp the extent to which covid and John Barilaro's leave may or may not have affected the decision making process (meaning it could easily take a bit longer, and we should not be surprised if this is the case). With all that's going on in the world why shouldn't this approval take longer than all the other PEP-11 approvals before it?