Planning permits in City of Whitehorse.

Whitehorse publishes the most transparent overlay breakdown of any council we work with — schedule by schedule, on its own website. That is genuinely useful, and it means there is little excuse for being surprised here.

It is also a municipality of two speeds: the Box Hill Metropolitan Activity Centre carries serious height and density, while a few kilometres away twelve schedules of Significant Landscape Overlay protect canopy and character. Which Whitehorse you are in changes everything.

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.

• Significant Landscape Overlay — Twelve schedules — unusually extensive — covering Blackburn, Mitcham, Vermont, Gardiners Creek and Koonung Creek. Landscape character carries real weight in this municipality.
• Heritage Overlay — Both individual properties and named precincts: the Box Hill Commercial Precinct, Mont Albert Residential Precinct, Windsor Park Estate in Surrey Hills, and Mount View Court in Burwood, among others.
• Parking Overlay — Applies specifically to the Box Hill Metropolitan Activity Centre, from the Box Hill Central Activities Area Car Parking Strategy (Amendment C158). Few councils have one.
• Design and Development Overlay — Nine schedules, covering the Blackburn, Mitcham and Tally Ho activity centres and Burwood.
• Development Plan Overlay — Eight schedules, including Box Hill, Box Hill South, Burwood East, Nunawading and the Forest Hill Activity Centre.
• Bushfire Management Overlay — Around 270 properties, concentrated in Mitcham, introduced via Amendment GC13 in October 2017. Unexpected this close to the city, and it changes the documentation entirely.
• Neighbourhood Character Overlay — Two schedules — Blackburn Early Settlement and Box Hill Neighbourhood Character.
• Land Subject to Inundation, Special Building, Environmental Significance, Environmental Audit, Public Acquisition, Vegetation Protection and Specific Controls overlays — All also apply in defined areas. The Specific Controls Overlay covers the Suburban Rail Loop and North East Link projects.

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

• Box Hill has its own Parking Overlay. If your project is in the activity centre, parking is not a standard ResCode conversation — it is governed by a specific local strategy.
• Checklists are published per application type — dwellings, subdivision, signage, heritage, Special Building Overlay, Significant Landscape Overlay tree removal, licensed premises and more. This is the most granular checklist set of any council on this list, and there is no reason to lodge an incomplete application here.
• A Special Building Overlay VicSmart application requires Melbourne Water approval before you lodge — not during assessment. Miss that and you do not have an application.
• Local planning policies were merged into the state Planning Policy Framework in November 2024. Policy intent is unchanged, but references have moved.

Timing, fees and process

• VicSmart: council states a 10 working day permit process, not advertised.
• VCAT appeal window: 60 days from the date of decision.

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 City of Whitehorse

Blackburn, Blackburn North, Blackburn South, Box Hill, Box Hill North, Box Hill South, Burwood East, Forest Hill, Mitcham, Mont Albert North and Vermont South — plus Burwood, Mont Albert, Nunawading, Surrey Hills and Vermont, which are shared with neighbouring councils.

Suburbs we have built in, with their own local detail: Box Hill · Burwood · Surrey Hills · Mitcham · Blackburn.

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