Planning permits in Glen Eira City Council.

Glen Eira is a character council. Its Neighbourhood Character Overlay framework — introduced through Amendment C87 — is the control that most often decides what a proposal here is allowed to look like, and it replaced the older significant character areas approach.

Bentleigh sits in this municipality, and it is an area where period housing stock, active heritage work and steady redevelopment pressure meet. Getting the character argument right is not a formality here; it is the application.

The overlays that matter in this municipality

Overlays are what quietly decide cost and programme. These are the ones that genuinely recur here — and what each one actually means for your drawings.

• Neighbourhood Character Overlay — The defining local control, introduced via Amendment C87. Where it applies, the character argument is the assessment.
• Heritage Overlay — An extensive schedule under Clause 43.01, with active heritage precinct work carried out across Bentleigh and Carnegie.
• Significant Landscape Overlay — Schedule 1, under Clause 42.03.
• Design and Development Overlay — Including work around the Carnegie activity centre managing height and setbacks against the Koornang Road character.
• Special Building Overlay — Flood-related, and significant enough to carry its own VicSmart checklist.

You can check which of these sit over your own title in about two minutes, free, before engaging anyone: search your address on the Victorian Government's planning property report. Send us the result and we can usually tell you whether a permit is likely from one conversation.

Local controls and quirks worth knowing

• The Neighbourhood Character Overlay (Amendment C87) is the thing to understand here. It is the framework that replaced the old significant character areas, and it is where most Glen Eira applications are won or lost.
• Twelve numbered VicSmart checklists are published — including front fences, minor works in a Heritage Overlay and Special Building Overlay works. If your job is on that list, use the fast pathway.
• Heritage work is live in Bentleigh. Heritage consultants have been engaged on commercial and residential precinct studies, which means controls in this area can change between projects.

Timing, fees and process

• Standard applications: council aims to decide within 60 days of receiving a complete application.
• VicSmart: 10 business days from when council has all your information.
• Where advertising is required, the minimum notice period is 14 days.

Figures above are council-published at the time of writing and change — treat them as orientation, not gospel, and confirm current fees and requirements with council. We keep across them, but the council's own page is always the authority.

How we prepare a submission here

The way to move quickly through planning is not to make the drawings prettier — it is to make them answerable. Most delays are not design disputes; they are requests for further information, which stop the statutory clock until you respond.

So we start with the planning property report, establish the zone and overlays before design, get a feature and level survey underneath it, test the built form against the local character controls that apply to your precinct, and then assemble a submission that responds to each relevant ResCode standard — Clause 54 for a single dwelling, Clause 55 for two or more — rather than asserting compliance and hoping.

Read more on what a town planning set contains, multi-dwelling work under Clause 55, or the building permit stage that follows.

Suburbs we cover in Glen Eira City Council

Bentleigh, Bentleigh East, Brighton East, Carnegie, Caulfield, Elsternwick, Gardenvale, Glen Huntly, McKinnon, Murrumbeena, Ormond and St Kilda East.

Suburbs we have built in, with their own local detail: Bentleigh · Carnegie.

Working somewhere else? See all our service areas, or send us your address and we will tell you which council and controls apply.