Planning permits in Monash City Council.

Monash is where a large share of our multi-dwelling work sits. Oakleigh, Clayton and Huntingdale are all inside this municipality, and all three sit inside adopted activity centre structure plans — which is precisely why the yield question here is answered by policy, not by land size.

If your site is anywhere near one of those centres, the structure plan is the document that decides what you can build. Reading it first is the difference between a scheme that gets approved and one that gets cut down after six months of assessment.

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.

• Heritage Overlay — Applies across defined precincts including parts of Oakleigh. Council maintains a dedicated heritage overlay resource.
• Significant Landscape Overlay — Protects landscape and canopy character in defined areas — it governs vegetation and can shape building footprints.
• Special Building Overlay — Flood-related, with the usual Melbourne Water involvement.
• Vegetation Protection Overlay — Tree removal here has its own VicSmart-eligible pathway, which is worth knowing before you assume a tree is a problem.

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

• Seven adopted activity centre structure plans — and three of them cover suburbs we have built in: Oakleigh (2012, gazetted via Amendment C93 in 2013), Clayton (2020) and Huntingdale (2020). Also Mount Waverley (2021), Brandon Park, Glen Waverley and Wheelers Hill.
• Residential Development Guidelines set out a seven-step process — research, property information and neighbourhood character, neighbourhood and site description, preliminary design, pre-application meeting, detailed design, then lodge. Council expects to see that work reflected in the submission.
• Pre-application advice is tiered. No fee for single dwelling alterations, up to three dwellings, signage and vegetation removal. Standard applies to 4–9 dwellings; Major to 10+ dwellings and larger commercial, industrial and mixed use.

Timing, fees and process

• VicSmart: council states a 10 business day approval process for complete applications.
• Written planning advice: council asks you to allow a strong 10 to 14 working days for a response.
• VicSmart eligibility here covers two-dwelling developments, single dwelling extensions, fences, signage, subdivisions, minor works in the Heritage, Special Building and Significant Landscape overlays, and car parking reductions up to 10 spaces.

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 Monash City Council

Ashwood, Clayton, Glen Waverley, Hughesdale, Huntingdale, Mount Waverley, Mulgrave, Notting Hill, Oakleigh, Oakleigh East and Wheelers Hill, plus parts of Chadstone, Burwood and Oakleigh South.

Suburbs we have built in, with their own local detail: Oakleigh · Clayton · Huntingdale · Glen Waverley · Mount Waverley.

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