Posted 12/9/12

Changes to State Planning Zones, 2012

Make a Submission

Find out more by going to http://www.dpcd.vic.gov.au/planning/theplanningsystem/improving-the-system/new-zones-for-victoria.  Go to the bottom of that page for information about making a submission.

Submissions can be made online (through an online form) or by uploading a PDF document.  

DPCD Enquiries: 1300 366 356 or planning.systems@dpcd.vic.gov.au.

Key Points

The Minister for Planning can be congratulated for introducing the Neighbourhood Residential Zone and multiple schedules to most residential zones, and for introducing the ability to put objectives, maximum heights, application requirements and decision guidelines in those schedules (in addition, lot sizes and requirements for single and multiple dwellings can be included in the Neighbourhood Residential Zone schedule).  This is good, accountable, fair, sound and orderly planning that increases certainty and will produce better outcomes, and it deserves recognition and applause.

From there however, it is all downhill.  Victoria risks becoming the Mixed Use State.

• Other proposed changes appear to be arbitrary, not thought through, and not based on orderly or strategic planning principles.  

• Changing so many uses to not needing a permit strips the public of its rights to know about and object to what happens around them.  You end up not having any say about what happens next to you or to where you live.

• More 'anything, anywhere' produces less, not more, certainty.

• Changes

  • advantage the few over the many,

  • undermine on-going rural and farming land use,

  • damage the most sensitive areas in the State, and

  • undermine local business and industrial economies and degrade residential amenity by allowing residential in business areas, and business uses in residential areas.  Oil and water, they don't mix.

• There is also a distinctly metropolitan feel and thinking to some of these changes which neither understands nor recognizes the different needs and circumstances of rural and regional areas.  Here, these change will have potentially devastating impacts.

• Changes are the same State-wide, even though Victoria definitely isn't the same everywhere:  Melbourne isn't the Wimmera isn't the outer suburbs isn't the interface municipalities isn't the Green Wedges isn't the Alps, and 'one size' has already been proven to not fit all.

Make a submission calling on the Minister for Planning to reject these use changes and infinite subdivision in rural zones.  The new Neighbourhood Residential zone and new schedules for residential zones are a great step forward, and the State government must build on those principles instead.

Summary of Key Changes

Residential Zones

NEW Zones: Residential Growth Zone [RGZ], General Residential Zone [GRZ], Neighbourhood Residential Zone [NRZ]

CHANGED Zones:  Mixed Use Zone [MUZ], Township Zone [TZ], Low Density Residential Zone [LDRZ].

ü YES  Multiple schedules are allowed for each zone (except the Low Density Residential Zone), allowing differences within the same zone to be recognised and addressed.

ü YES Zone schedules can include objectives, permit triggers for dwellings, maximum heights for residential development, variations to ResCode, application requirements, and decision guidelines (except the Low Density Residential Zone).

ü YES The new Neighbourhood Residential Zone schedule also allows minimum lot sizes, the maximum number of houses on a lot, residential heights and permits for one house on a lot to be set in the schedule.  Macedon Ranges needs this zone.

û NO  Offices, shops, medical centres, food and drink premises/takeaway/restaurants, supermarkets and places of worship are to be allowed - without planning or buildings and works permits - in the Residential Growth, General Residential and Mixed Use Zones (many of these uses are currently prohibited because of their incompatibility with and potential to disrupt residential amenity). 

• The exceptions are the Neighbourhood Residential zone and Low Density Residential zone.  In the NRZ and LDRZ, medical centres will no longer require a permit, and size becomes the only restriction on places of worship, which also don't require a permit.

• If a planning permit is not required, uses cannot have conditions put on them to control trading/operating hours, traffic, light, noise, activities, etc.  Where these uses are located also cannot be controlled.  Even though these changes put things together that don't go together, and right up to your fence, you aren't entitled to object.

û NO The Mixed Use Zone (already semi-industrial but somehow called a "residential' zone) becomes even more of a mixed up mess with these changes.

û NO The minimum lot size is halved to 0.2ha in the Low Density Residential zone where sewered e.g. Macedon, north Woodend, unless the zone schedule says otherwise (it doesn't say otherwise in Macedon Ranges).  This reduction doesn't recognize other reasons why land is zoned Low Density Residential (fire risk, diversity, landscape, interface with rural zones, etc).

Business/Commercial Zones

NEW Zones: Commercial 1 Zone [C1], Commercial 2 Zone [C2]

Deleted Zones:  Business 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Zones  (Zone Schedules are also deleted)

û NO Five current diverse business zones are squeezed into two zones with a 'one-size-fits-all', mixed use approach.  The ability to specifically cater for and encourage similar business types in appropriate locations is lost.  Likewise, the ability to identify specific requirements for different types of businesses is removed by deleting the zone schedules.

û NO The purpose of the current Business 1 Zone (the most used zone, commonly applied to both urban and rural town commercial centres) is promoting retailing.  On the other hand, the purpose of the new Commercial 1 zone (which replaces the Business 1 zone) is 'mixed use' and 'higher density residential'.  It isn't clear why a Commercial zone has a purpose of 'higher density residential'.

û NO Incompatible uses currently prohibited or requiring a permit (often with a condition to be met) in the Business 1 zone are made "no permit required, no conditions, no restrictions" in the Commercial 1 zone,  meaning they can just happen, how and where someone wants them. These include Accommodation (such as residential hotels, nurses homes, residential colleges, camping and caravan parks and even residential villages in the High Street shopping area),  offices, exhibition centres, schools, retail premises including gaming premises, manufacturing sales, and all shops (including supermarkets) except Adult Sex Bookshop, which alone requires a permit.  "No permit required" or "as-of-right" means no-one (including traders) has any rights to object or even know about these uses being undertaken, no planning standards have to be met, and no conditions can be placed on the use.  The changes also put schools in a zone which allows Adult Sex Bookshops and Brothels.  Significantly less certainty, with potential to squeeze retailing off High Streets and deny new retailing opportunities, as non-retailing and incompatible uses take over.  Could significantly undermine small town economies.

û NO The Commercial 2 zone is semi-industrial but requires a permit for some of the uses that can happen without one in the Commercial 1 zone. It newly allows almost all forms of Accommodation and schools with a permit, and also industry, office, cinemas, food and drink premises (including restaurants, taverns and hotels), shops/supermarkets and warehouses without a permit.   Extreme 'mixed use' that will likely end up neither pleasing nor serving the best interests of anyone.

Industrial Zones

Changed Zones:  Industrial 1 Zone [IN1 - general industry], Industrial 2 Zone [IN2 - offensive industry], Industrial 3 Zone [IN3 'light' industry]

û NO The current Industrial 1 zone schedule, which allows the size of some business types to be regulated, is deleted. This opens the door for a single large business to occupy most or all of available industrial land, with concurrent loss of diversity and opportunities for new industrial enterprises.

û NO The current Industrial 3 zone is changed to allow (of all things) shops and supermarkets to establish in the zone, without a permit.

Rural Zones

Amended Zones:  Farming Zone [FZ], Rural Activity Zone [RAZ], Rural Conservation Zone [RCZ], Green Wedge Zone [GWZ], Green Wedge A Zone [GWAZ], Rural Living Zone [RLZ]

û NO Current rural zones require an agreement to be made that if rural land is subdivided, it cannot be subdivided again.  Changes remove the requirement for an agreement, allowing lots in all rural zones to be subdivided over and over and over again. 

û NO There are major changes to use in all rural zones except Rural Living. 

û NO On-going farming in the Farming zone is undermined by changes allowing a vast array of uses that are unrelated to and potentially compromise farming.  Some of these are currently prohibited - most accommodation, car wash, dry cleaners, primary and secondary schools, motor vehicle sales, cinema, nurses home, service station, residential village, display home and so on. 

û NO Critically, similar changes (but to a slightly lesser degree) are made to the Rural Conservation Zone, which is applied to the most sensitive and potentially dangerous areas of the State, and to the Green Wedge A zone.  Allowing Accommodation uses in particular (including hotels, nurses homes and residential colleges as well as residential and retirement villages!), and restaurants without conditions restricting scale and location, on unsewered, high fire risk, farming, high value conservation or steep land, and in open drinking water catchments, is completely illogical.  Why allow crematoriums, freeway service centres, paint ball games, zoos, primary and secondary schools, saleyards and prisons in these sensitive areas? 

û NO The Green Wedge Zone cops it as well and is also opened up to nightclubs and cabarets, display homes, amusement parlours and service stations. 

û NO In the Farming and Rural Conservation Zones, the current zone default which prohibits all uses not specifically allowed in each zone's Table of Uses is changed to 'permit required'.  This opens these zones up to almost anything being able to be applied for.

û NO The Rural Activity Zone, already the 'do almost anything' zone, steps further away from both rural and reality by also adding more non-rural if not suburban uses to those already available.  This is the only "rural" zone where all retail premises and shops are OK, including laundromats, bottle shops, gaming premises and adult sex bookshops!  This is the 'rural' zone you have when you don't want a rural zone.

û  NO The Rural Living zone's default minimum lot size is reduced from 8ha to 2ha – making it a Living, not Rural, zone.