Sheds & garages for Melbourne & Geelong homes

Anything bigger than a small garden shed is, in the eyes of the regulations, a Class 10a building — and in Victoria that means a garage, workshop or storage shed almost always needs a building permit before a single post goes in. We handle that end to end: siting, footings, the permit, and a build that's squared, flashed and fixed to last.

The kit you buy at the hardware store is a pile of steel; the building is what we do with it. Get the slab, the tie-downs and the boundary setbacks right and it stands straight for decades. Get them wrong and you've got a leaning shed, a rejected permit, or a structure the next buyer's conveyancer flags on sale.

When you actually need a permit

The exemption people cling to is narrow. A freestanding shed is only permit-exempt if it's 10 m² or less, sits inside the standard boundary setbacks, isn't in a bushfire-prone area and doesn't affect site drainage. In practice that covers a garden shed and little else — any real single or double garage clears 10 m² on the first line of the plan, so it needs a building permit.

Two different approvals can apply, and people mix them up. A building permit is issued by a registered building surveyor — private or council — and confirms the structure meets the Building Act 1993, the Building Regulations 2018 and the National Construction Code. A planning permit is a separate approval from your council's planning side, and it can be triggered by a lot under 300 m², a masonry build, a structure sitting forward of your home's front wall, or a heritage, bushfire or flood overlay on the title. We work out which you need before drawing anything.

Permit guidance reviewed 6 September 2026; the exact building and planning requirements are confirmed against your property before lodgement.

Where it sits on your block

Setbacks are where shed projects come unstuck. A single-storey Class 10a can generally sit within a metre of a side or rear boundary, but that's conditional on wall height — and once you're within roughly 1.2 m of a side or 5 m of a rear boundary you're often into a Report and Consent from council on top of the permit. Front setbacks are larger and differ by council and zone. If the build lands over an easement — a drain or a service running through your yard — you need the relevant authority's consent first, and no surveyor will sign off around that.

Steel or timber-framed, and the footings underneath

Most Melbourne garages we build are steel-framed for the strength-to-cost and the clear span; timber framing suits a workshop you want lined and warm, or a look that matches a period home. Either way, the building is only as good as what's under it. On the reactive clay across Melbourne's north and west, the footings and slab get sized to a site classification (AS 2870) — skip that and the slab cracks and the doors stop shutting square within a few dry-wet seasons. An open carport attached to or within 900 mm of the house is exempt from the fire-separation rule; close it in and that changes, which is exactly the sort of detail we flag early rather than at inspection.

Bushfire, flood and heritage blocks

Where your block sits changes the build. In a Bushfire Management Overlay — the Dandenongs, the Yarra Ranges and much of the outer fringe — the permit exemption falls away and the structure has to meet a BAL rating, which drives non-combustible cladding and detailing. On low-lying or flood-overlay land the finished floor level and drainage are set by the overlay, not by preference. In a heritage area the design has to sit sympathetically with the streetscape to clear planning. We check the overlays on your title first and design to them, rather than drawing something that can't be approved.

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