Pre-application planning advice

If you need advice before lodging a planning permit application, you can book a pre-application meeting with our planning staff.

Find out if you need a planning permit.

Pre-application planning advice

Darebin's Planning Services team offers a pre-application advice service to customers for advice on a proposed use or development prior to lodging a full planning permit application. It's quick and easy to request advice online:

  • The first step is to identify your property, then follow the prompts to complete the process.

Pre-application planning advice

Note: pre-application advice does not guarantee that a permit will be issued.

Pre-application fees

From 1 July 2024, a range of pre-application submissions, including multi-residential and commercial proposals, will be subject to a fee.

You may check your application fees (PDF, 170KB) to determine the relevant fee for your pre-application submission.

Pre-application advice related to one dwelling and small second dwellings is free.

 

How will you benefit?

A pre-application meeting can help you recognise issues that may be important to the use of your property. It's an open discussion where everyone works towards a positive outcome. It should also give you some certainty about the outcome of your application and make the process more efficient.

What advice can we give?

Pre-application meetings cannot investigate every detail covered in the formal assessment stage after you lodge an application. The time and level of detail in the meeting makes it impossible to give you a thorough assessment. We give advice in good faith and we’re not bound in future decisions.

What is appropriate?

While any type of development is appropriate for pre-application meetings, we strongly encourage applications that involve:

  • medium to large-scale commercial developments
  • complex issues requiring strategic or policy direction.

What can you discuss?

At the meeting you can discuss such issues as:

  • initial concepts
  • detailed design aspects
  • any other requirements.

Our planning officers will give their professional opinions and offer guidance where possible, but the meeting is not intended to pre-empt the outcome. Once you lodge your planning application, it will undergo a thorough assessment against the provisions of the Darebin Planning Scheme.

Preparing for the meeting

Preparation is essential. You should research your proposal and identify relevant issues for the meeting. The quality of our advice depends on how much detail you give us.

Here's a checklist to help you prepare for the meeting. We highly recommend that you bring the following:

  • A full copy of title that is no more than three months old
  • Photos of the site and surrounding area, especially neighbouring properties, the streetscape and significantly sized vegetation
  • A neighbourhood and site description plan showing:
    • existing buildings on site
    • the location of buildings on at least four adjoining properties (including room windows and private open space areas)
    • a concept plan at a ratio of 1:100 including detail such as the proposed building footprint, window placement, internal building layouts, earthworks, retaining wall locations, existing vegetation, car parking and vehicle access, current and proposed crossovers, and a concept design of elevations.

The above information will give our planner a reasonable understanding of your proposal, and help us give you more accurate and useful advice. You may need a consultant to help prepare this information and facilitate the application process.

We aim for the planner you meet with to manage your application once you lodge it. However, we can't always guarantee this, due to staff movements and workloads.

Where will the meeting be?

Pre-application meetings are held either virtually or at Darebin City Council, 274 Gower Street Preston. You'll need to request a meeting ahead of time by contacting the Planning Department on 03 8470 8850 between 8:45am and 4:45pm, Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays) or email townplan@darebin.vic.gov.au

Development contributions

If you're building or extending a commercial or industrial building, you may have to pay a development contribution before we issue a building permit. We will invoice you for this after we issue a planning permit for the development.

More information

Planning Department
Phone: 03 8470 8850
Email: townplan@darebin.vic.gov.au

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