Earlier this week, the Gadens Planning & Environment Team attended VPELA’s annual Planning Minister’s Address in Melbourne.

Before a packed house of planning industry professionals, the Hon. Sonya Kilkenny MP provided an overview of the suite of planning reforms the Department is currently working through in order to deliver more housing to Victorian, as well a preview of the changes still to come – followed by a Q&A session.

The key takeaways from this discussion:

• Given the current housing crisis, there is a “need for speed and need for decisiveness” when it comes to these planning reforms.
• The overwhelming feedback from community consultation undertaken for Plan for Victoria is that Victorians want housing choice and options.
• In recent years, too much housing has gone into the Greenfields and these growth areas have borne too much of the infrastructure and services load.
• There is a housing target of 2.24 Millon homes by 2050, with individual local government housing targets for each municipality. These are housing capacity targets – locations where it has been identified that there is capacity for additional homes to be accommodated.
• While there is strong desire to work with local government, if local Councils do not meet these housing targets, it has been made clear that the State Government can step in to deliver this housing. There is a pressing and urgent need to get these additional houses built and delivered at speed – to provide certainty to the younger generation that they will have more of an opportunity to live where they grew up.
• The “deemed to comply” approval pathways are critical pillars to the proposed planning reforms. This will be a fundamental shift from the current performance-based assessment system and will limit third party involvement in circumstances where the deemed to comply standards have been met. Modelling indicates that there are approximately 360,000 dwellings in Activity Centres and 60,000 dwellings in the new SRL precincts, which may be eligible for the new “deemed to comply” approval pathways.
• Outside of housing, the State Government is also looking at employment and other land uses to match where people are living, with a 10-year industrial land plan currently being developed.

What’s next?

• A streamlined 2 lot subdivision application process / 2 dwellings on a lot.
• Planning and Environment Act reforms – there will be a focus on providing greater certainty around the timeframes and process around the Planning Scheme Amendment process, planning permit applications and responding to the IBAC recommendations. The reform of single dwelling restrictive covenants has been raised as an issue as part of the P&E Act reform consultation to date, but there is currently no announcement around this particular issue.
• Embed Plan for Victoria into the Victorian Planning Provisions.
• A new mid-rise code for 4 to 6 storey apartment buildings.
• Strengthen apartment design standards.