email minutiae: planning zones

One of the early things I did, even before the property viewing, was to check out the planning situation to make sure we'd be able to build on it, etc. Thank goodness for the Internet, it means you can research all this kind of thing from anywhere. Here's what I found and sent on to Dave


email to Dave about planning - 13th Jan 2004

Hi, here's some things you might want to look at.

First, I found our property on this map:
http://services.land.vic.gov.au/landchannel/content/interactivemap



Then I followed link to find out about planning zones and found the property again here
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/planningschemes/centralgoldfields/ Maps/centralgoldfields15zn.pdf
If you blow it up to 200% and then go down about halfway on the vertical and two thirds of the way on the bottom you'll see it. It is near the intersection of Glenmona Road and Lilicur road and is labelled 3C. In many ways this is an even better map than the other because you can scroll across the area and see that everywhere seems to be farms of about our size, and also that we're on the edge of the forest. The important thing from this is that we are in planning zone RUZ which is Rural Zone.

Here is the link to what Rural Zone means
http://www.land.vic.gov.au/web/root/domino/cm_da/lcnlc2.nsf/
frameset/LC_External?OpenDocument&FRAMEURL_CONTENT=[http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/planningschemes]
At first I got excited because the main zone description says you don't need planning permission to build a dwelling, or indeed more than one dwelling, nor to run a B&B provided it houses fewer than 6 guests. But then I saw that there was a schedule to the report and all that only applies if your land is less than 40 hectares. Which ours isn't because apparently to convert from hectares to acres you multiply the hectares number by 2.47. So we probably do need to doublecheck with the council to find out about the planning situation. Also, you don't need planning permission to keep animals provided you have 5 or less but we would be over that too. But, from looking at the main clauses to do with granting permits I think we would be OK