Victorian planning overlays: what they add to a zone

In Victoria, a zone says what use and development is generally allowed on land. An overlay adds requirements for one particular issue, such as bushfire, flooding or heritage. Land has a zone, and it may have overlays as well.

How a Victorian scheme is built

Every Victorian planning scheme is built from the Victoria Planning Provisions plus local content. Each council's scheme draws its zones and overlays from the same statewide set, and a schedule to each one sets the local detail. An overlay is applied by amending the scheme, and not every scheme applies every overlay. The Bushfire Management Overlay, for example, is not in every council's scheme.

That makes an absence mean one of three things. The council's scheme applies the overlay and the land is outside its mapped area. Or the scheme applies no overlay of that kind anywhere in the municipality, so there is no mapped area to be inside or outside of. Or we do not hold that council's scheme, and nothing can be said. Neither of the first two is a statement that the hazard cannot occur on the land. See what “unmapped” means for the general case.

Three flood overlays, not one

Victoria maps flooding as separate controls, and they are not interchangeable. Land can be in one and not the others.

• The Land Subject to Inundation Overlay (clause 44.04) covers land in flood storage or the flood fringe, affected by the 1 in 100 year flood but not in the primary floodway.
• The Floodway Overlay covers land that actively carries floodwater.
• The Special Building Overlay (clause 44.05) covers urban land subject to overland flow when the capacity of the stormwater drainage system is exceeded.

None of them gives a flood level for a floor, a depth or a frequency. The flood check guide says who holds those.

Bushfire

The Bushfire Management Overlay (clause 44.06) exists to protect life. It identifies where the bushfire hazard needs protection measures, and it allows development only where the risk can be reduced to an acceptable level. It is a planning control. It is not a bushfire attack level, which is a construction rating; the difference is set out in bushfire attack level and bush fire prone land.

The other overlays our report reads

For planning, the Design and Development Overlay, the Development Plan Overlay, the Significant Landscape Overlay, the Vegetation Protection Overlay and the Public Acquisition Overlay, which reserves land for future acquisition by an authority. The Heritage Overlay is a council control and is separate from the Victorian Heritage Register; see heritage item, conservation area or overlay.

For hazards, the Erosion Management Overlay, the Environmental Audit Overlay, the Salinity Management Overlay and the Environmental Significance Overlay. Where one applies, the schedule to it in the council's scheme sets what is actually required, and the council is the one to ask.

Four other statewide layers are not overlays and are reported separately, each with its own meaning of an absence: the Victorian Heritage Register, the Victorian Heritage Inventory, areas of Aboriginal cultural heritage sensitivity, and special water supply catchments. Coastal acid sulfate soil is reported too, but its mapping covers the coastal strip only.

Finding out what applies

VicPlan names the zone and the overlays for an address, and the schemes are published in full by the Victorian Government. A planning certificate under section 199 of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 states the zone and the overlays. It does not state where the boundaries are or give other specific controls. Flood levels are held by Melbourne Water in the Port Phillip and Westernport region, and by the regional catchment management authority or the council elsewhere.

What our report shows, and does not

For a Victorian address the report gives the zone and each of the overlays above as its own line, with the three-way absence kept apart, so a reader is not told “no” when the scheme has no such overlay at all. It states that an overlay is a trigger for assessment, not a risk model.

It does not read the schedule to any overlay, so it does not say what an overlay requires. It does not cover overlays outside this list, planning scheme amendments or proposals, or particular provisions. It gives no flood depth or level and no bushfire attack level, and it does not read the content of the section 32 vendor statement. The Victorian hazard map and the Victorian council pages show what is mapped in each council area.

Reports from $9.90 including GST, paid once. The price belongs to the jurisdiction the address is in. The check is free: it tells you the exact total for your address, and which registers cover it, before you pay anything.