Town planning drawings, prepared for the assessor.

Most planning delays are not design disputes. They're paperwork. Council receives an application, finds it can't assess it on what was submitted, and issues a request for further information — at which point the statutory clock stops and your project sits still until you answer.

The way to move quickly through planning is not to make the drawings prettier. It's to make them answerable.

What council is actually assessing

Three layers, and all three have to be satisfied:

• The zone — what the land is meant to be used for, and what that permits as-of-right versus with a permit.
• The overlays — heritage, bushfire, significant landscape, inundation, design and development. Each one adds its own requirements and sometimes its own referral authority.
• ResCode — the residential standards. Clause 54 for a single dwelling on a lot; Clause 55 for two or more dwellings and residential buildings.

A submission has to address the relevant standards one by one. Asserting that a proposal "complies with ResCode" is not a response. Demonstrating, standard by standard, how it complies — or why a variation is acceptable on this site — is.

Where the planning permit sits in the process

Planning is one of two separate approvals, and it comes first. The drawings council endorses become the basis of the working drawings, which is why redesigning after approval is so expensive.

What a planning set carries

• Existing conditions and site plan — built off a feature and level survey, not an assumption.
• Demolition plan — what goes, what stays.
• Floor plans, elevations and sections — with a materials and colours schedule, because appearance is assessable.
• Shadow diagrams — at the equinox, 9am, 12pm and 3pm, showing effect on neighbouring open space.
• Overlooking and overshadowing analysis — sightlines, screening, habitable room windows.
• Landscape plan — increasingly decisive, and often what tips a marginal application.
• Neighbourhood and site description — the context argument, in drawings and words.
• A written ResCode response — standard by standard.

Overlays are what quietly add time

Two identical proposals on two identical blocks can take very different paths, because of what sits over the title. A Bushfire Management Overlay brings a BAL assessment. A Heritage Overlay brings a heritage response and constrains the street-facing form. A Vegetation Protection Overlay may bring an arborist. Land Subject to Inundation brings floor levels, drainage and a referral to an authority such as Melbourne Water.

None of these are disasters. All of them are expensive if discovered after the design is settled. We check them at feasibility, before anyone falls in love with a drawing.

Objections, advertising and the neighbour problem

Standard applications can be advertised, which means neighbours can object, which means the outcome partly depends on how defensible the proposal looks to a planner reading objections. Overlooking, overshadowing and neighbourhood character are the three grounds that carry weight.

Designing with those three in mind from the start is cheaper than defending them later. It's also why we test yield and built form at feasibility rather than after.

Related: our town planning service, building permit drawings (the next stage), and multi-dwelling work under Clause 55.