Building design & drafting in Cheltenham.

What's built here

One of the earliest-settled parts of the old Moorabbin parish — the station opened in 1881 and housing grew around Charman Road from the late nineteenth century, though Cheltenham was not formally recognised as its own suburb until 1958. It then became a significant postwar industrial and residential location, with the mass-produced modest weatherboard housing typical of that era.

The planning context

Cheltenham, with Southland, is a Major Activity Centre governed by a structure plan adopted in July 2010 — and that document is now being overtaken. A new Suburban Rail Loop station is planned beside Southland, a draft precinct structure plan and planning scheme amendment were exhibited in 2025, and an advisory committee reported in early 2026 with gazettal anticipated around the middle of that year. Council has separately been reviewing whether to upgrade Cheltenham–Southland to a Metropolitan Activity Centre and incorporate the former Highett Gasworks renewal land.

Controls that actually apply in Cheltenham

• The 2010 structure plan may not be the answer — Check whether the SRL East precinct controls have been gazetted before relying on it. The station precinct planning is rewriting this centre right now.
• Land Subject to Inundation and Special Building overlays — Kingston-wide, and unchanged since first applied in 2002. Council itself flags the flood mapping as due for review — so a site's mapped flood risk may not reflect current conditions. A proactive Melbourne Water check beats trusting a 20-year-old map.
• Environmental Audit Overlay — Kingston's Amendment C201 identified 47 contaminated or potentially contaminated sites across the municipality — service stations, drycleaners, a landfill, mechanics workshops. This is site-specific, not suburb-wide. On a former industrial or servicing site in Cheltenham, contamination due diligence is a real early step; elsewhere it is not.

Check what sits over your own title in two minutes, free: search your address on the Victorian Government's planning property report. Send it to us and we can usually tell you whether a permit is likely from one conversation.

What we typically do in Cheltenham

Renovation and replacement of early postwar weatherboard stock; commercial and mixed use within the Cheltenham–Southland centre; site-specific contamination due diligence on former industrial land; medium-density housing anticipating the station catchment.

Whatever the type, the documentation is the same discipline: architectural drafting drawn to be built, town planning drawings council can assess first time, and working drawings a builder can price without padding.

Planning controls change — amendments are gazetted regularly. Everything above was accurate at the time of writing, but confirm current controls for your specific address before relying on them.

Talk to us about your Cheltenham project

Send us the address and the planning property report and we will tell you what applies — before you commit to anything. Get in touch, or see everywhere else we work.