Town Planning
Town planning is the most critical step in the development process. Until your town planning permit can be approved, your development cannot proceed. Gaining a town planning permit can often be a confusing, expensive and drawn-out process.
Here at Abode Design and Construct, we pride ourselves on the quality, and above all, the speed of our town planning applications.
Nearly a decade of experience with permit applications has helped us refine the process to a point where we can provide council with exactly what they need from the very start, avoiding extra cost and delays in the process further down the track.
Our dedicated town planning team will treat your application as if it was their own and look forward to providing your next development project with a smooth path through the permit application process.
A town planning permit certifies that:
- Your proposed land use is in a suitable location
- New and existing buildings do not interfere with each other
- Your development won’t harm the environment
- There is a degree of harmony between the character and scale of your proposed development and the existing surrounding buildings
- Any heritage buildings or land are preserved and/or respected
These elements are taken into account by the responsible authority (in most cases this is the relevant local council, or VCAT if a situation cannot be resolved with council) during every application. Certain elements are given more weight and other specific regulations may need to be adhered to, depending on the zoning of your site and any overlays or restrictions that may be applicable to the land.
The following is a simplified version of the standard town planning process:
A town planning application is submitted to council with a combination of architectural drawings and written reports. It is council’s task to assess the application and determine if more information or changes are required. Once council is satisfied with the information provided, the proposed development needs to be advertised to the development site’s immediate neighbours. The purpose of advertising is to allow anyone from the public to submit objections to the proposal, which are also considered by the responsible authority as a part of the application.
Following advertising and consideration of any objections (depending on the number of objections the application may need to be discussed at a council meeting but this is not common), a council decision will be made along with a set of conditions. These conditions are then used as a base for all following processes (i.e. subdivision and construction). The development’s end result must meet all of these conditions otherwise a "Statement Of Compliance" will not be issued by council.
Once a town planning permit is obtained it does not expire and is always associated with the land (although, often conditions state that a certain amount of construction must begin before a certain date in order to avoid the permit lapsing). However the planning permit is the key document and once obtained, all following steps are generally a matter of formality.
Our aim is to make the most unpredictable stage of a development, in terms of time and outcome much more efficient, while obtaining better results. In order to do this we have created our innovative on-line system. By basing everything on-line we make every step of the process transparent and available to you the client, ensuring a completely informative, efficient and thorough town planning process.
We highly recommended that you watch the "Town Planning Tour” video, located on the left of our town planning home page for more details of this very exciting process. This will take you behind the scenes and provide you with an idea of what to expect from our interactive system.
Our ideals for this process are:
Creating a completely efficient system, achieved using our fully automated process.
This includes instant, accurate on-line quotes for our prospective clients through to the immediate automatic notification of all the contractors or responsible parties of their required steps once the previous step in the process is completed. This means that the second a step is completed; the following step is instantly actioned.
All contractors have deadlines and penalties for late works. Our contractors have all relevant documents and data instantly available on-line so there are no delays with awaiting information or returned phone calls.
We have created a very detailed and thorough process for all steps in our town planning system. If there is a chance that council will ask for a step, we will usually do it from the start, often saving months of delays. The content that we provide for a Town Planning permit is extremely thorough, which we find ensures a quicker and more favorable outcome, whilst remaining cost efficient for you the client. Efficiency is at the forefront of our town planning system.
Communication, communication, communication
- nothing is better for good relationships than good communication!
Our on-line system will keep you fully informed 24 hours a day.
This is done via:
a) Automatically generated emails at the end of every step so you are fully notified of the where we are in the process, and;
b) Gantt charts / time Lines – Our online system will keep you informed by indicating what the original expected completion date is / was in relation to the current expected date (updated in real time). In addition to this, it will show what has been done, what is still to come and what stage of the process or what contractor was overdue or early.
Full disclosure
- all documentation is available for all contractors as well as yourself at any time.
This saves requesting information and also makes it available to you anywhere in the world, any time, as long as you have access to the Internet.
Transparency
– Being able to see what we see, and hiding nothing (good or bad), builds strong and trusting relationships.
This is what our on-line site is all about.
Every town planning permit application is unique with what is required for submission, however, there are main core items that do not change with any town planning application.
AbodeDAC company policy makes certain additional elements mandatory. In our experience, the inclusion of these professional documents from the outset makes the application process faster and projects more efficient and profitable.
Below is a list of what we provide with each permit application as a minimum requirement with notes on each. You can see samples of each of these documents by clicking on the link at top of the page.
- Application Form – Mandatory
- Current title documentation – Mandatory
- Feature Survey with Relocation – Not mandatory, however, a proper relocation survey (including contours) not only makes for a better design, but could potentially save you thousands of dollars and months of delays during the construction process as a result. Any firm not providing these as part of their standard package is not doing their clients justice!
- Architectural Drawings – Mandatory. All of AbodeDAC's drawings are printed in full colour (in A1 and A3), professionally presented, informative and great for pre-sales if required.
- Landscape Plan – Not mandatory for an initial planning permit application but are usually required later in the process as a condition of the planning permit. Doing it in the initial application stage makes a more thorough and quicker application. All AbodeDAC landscape plans are presented professionally and printed in full colour.
- Materials Schedule – Not mandatory, however, most councils will ask for this at some stage. A materials schedule is a valuable document to produce as it forms part of the development and ensures that a builder clearly knows what is expected and is given a clear picture of the owner and architect's intent.
- Response to ResCode Report – Mandatory
- Design Response Plan and Report – Mandatory
- Neighbourhood Character Plan and Report – Not mandatory, however, AbodeDAC produce a separate professional report along with streetscape drawings and other supporting photos for each application.
Depending on the individual circumstances of each application, there may be a need for additional requirements such as traffic surveys, arborist reports (trees) and build over easement applications. These would all be requested in the early stages of the application to ensure a speedy process.
Although not all of the documents listed above are mandatory, they are included as a part of every town planning quote.
Our attention to detail and inclusion of extra information and professional documents are the reason our applications are speedy and efficient. This also equates to a higher quality final product and more value in terms of the profitability your development can return.
Coming Soon.
Please check back soon.
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