This module provides an overview of elements of the Victoria Planning Provisions and how to use them to construct a planning scheme.
It explores the different elements of the Victoria Planning Provisions in some detail, and how they should be used, providing participants with strategies and techniques to help select the best tools to use in their local planning scheme.
As most Victorian practitioners will be aware, traditional ResCode has been heavily reworked and the old cl 55 turned into a heavily deemed-to-comply “townhouse and low-rise code.” Our ResCode course described below will obviously be reworked in coming weeks to reflect these changes. We are well placed to help your staff with this adjustment, with Stephen having been on the Technical Reference Group for the new code. We are eager to explore with local government leaders what their key training needs are going to be as the new code rolls out, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.
This course builds skills in the drafting of the MPS and the PPF. Attention will be paid to streamlining the MPS and PPF to avoid repetition with other parts of the scheme, therefore making the scheme easier to interpret for applicants, statutory planners and VCAT.
This short course is designed to encourage staff to reflect on the particular challenges of making good decisions in the Victorian system. In a system where sometimes it feels any decision is arguable, how do we make rigorous, accountable, logical and ethical decisions?
This session explores ways to think about the decision-making process, common pitfalls, and strategies to improve decision-making.
This module is a practical module to build skills in the drafting of zones and schedules to zones, overlays and particular provisions.
The module will include the elements of planning schemes, and how to draft them, including a table of uses, understanding the scope of what overlay controls can achieve in line with the purpose of the parent provision, and identifying and addressing potential overlaps and conflicts in controls within the scheme as a whole.
Planning permits are legally binding documents. This means that preparing them is a from of statutory drafting. This is an important foundational skill for any statutory planner.
This session covers the basics of drafting planning permits that are easy to understand and legally robust. It also covers the less frequently discussed topic of how to prepare a good refusal.
The environmental and landscape suite of overlays require a statement of significance, and the land management suite of overlays require a statement of risk to be included in any local schedule that is applied. These statements are fundamental to the operation of local schedules, and there is limited guidance about how to draft them.
This course will set out the principles for drafting including drawing on the resources available through the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub and provide best practice examples.
This session presents lessons from Stephen’s 25 years as a frequent, but somewhat reluctant, participant at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. It covers tips for presenting, the challenges of presenting planning as a planner in a pseudo-legal setting, and the particular challenges of presenting cases for local government.
This course will provide an overview of how to make the most of the planning scheme review process that needs to be completed every four years, as required under Section 12B of the Planning and Environment Act 1987.
Drawing on published advice from DELWP as well as experience from many Council reviews across the state, you will learn the steps that you should follow to undertake a meaningful and thorough review, and how to identify and strategically justify changes that need to be made to your planning scheme as a result.
The Victorian VPP-based planning system appears to be built on well-designed foundations, based on seemingly sound principles of strategically-driven performance-based planning. Yet after more than two decades it struggles to achieve efficient decision-making and effective policy implementation.
In this reflective session Stephen explores why multiple rounds of system review have made such limited progress. In response, he suggests alternative approaches to structuring and writing planning controls that can help the Victorian system deliver on its potential.
