Restrictive covenants have long been registered on land titles as a means of controlling land use and development. Some of the most common covenants, applicants seek to remove (or vary), are ‘single dwelling’ restrictions that prohibit development of land with more than one dwelling.
Only for the brave: Council refuses to support a planning permit application, then amends its position to support the application, then seeks to argue for the application to be refused, is then forced to support the application – but in the end the permit is refused and the permit applicant left to ponder how this ‘whole-planning-thing’ works.
A significant new tax/levy/fee (call it what you will) comes into effect July 1, 2015 and is of importance to all practitioners that provide advice or prepare planning permit applications within metropolitan Melbourne.
Planning Note: outlines what is required to constitute a planning permit application. What material is required to accompany the application and what is not . . .
A suite of new provisions in the Local Planning Policies will provide additional challenges to large numbers of planning permit applications in several inner city Councils.
Along with the recent changes to the planning zones, the State Government is also introducing further changes to the planning permit process in order to fast track simple and low impact planning permit applications through the statutory planning process.
Back in ML Design v Boroondara CC [2005] VCAT 2088, Deputy VCAT President Gibson found that an application for a planning permit requires only one item: an application form. In ML Design, we learned that anything else that the Council needs, including ‘mandatory’ items like the application fee, a certificate of title, plans and reports, can be sought through the Request for Further Information (RFI) process established at Section 54 of the Planning and Environment Act.
Clause:1 was recently invited to represent the BDAV at a briefing held, jointly, by the Building Commission and Growth Areas Authority (GAA) explaining the new Small Lot Housing Code.
The Victorian Planning regime is regularly criticised for its increasing complexity and the inordinate amount of time and cost it takes to acquire a decision in planning matters. The issues of time and cost are unequivocally the greatest hurdles facing planning permit applicant’s.
When making a decision on any planning permit application, the decision maker must only consider issues relevant to that application.
