Building permit vs planning permit: the two approvals people confuse

Here's the thing nobody explains clearly at the hardware store: in Victoria there are two separate approval systems, and an outdoor build can need one, the other, both, or occasionally neither. A planning permit is about whether you're allowed to do something on your land — use, amenity, the character of the street, and any overlays sitting over your block. A building permit is about whether what you build is structurally sound and safe and meets the construction rules. They're issued by different people, they cost different money, and getting them in the wrong order is how projects stall.

What a building permit actually is

A building permit is issued by a building surveyor — either a private one you engage or your council's municipal surveyor. Their job is to check that the design and construction meet the National Construction Code and the relevant standards: that the footings suit the soil, the beams carry the load, the roof won't lift in a big blow, the barriers are high enough, and so on. They assess the engineered plans, issue the permit, inspect at key stages (footings, frame, final) and sign off at the end. That final sign-off is the piece of paper that matters when you sell.

For a roofed structure — a verandah, a carport, a patio with a solid roof — you should assume a building permit is needed. Some genuinely small, open, freestanding things are exempt by size and siting (the classic example is a small garden shed below a certain floor area and height, kept off the boundaries), but the exemptions are narrower than people hope, and the figures have moved over the years. We check the current exemption thresholds for every job rather than trusting a number someone remembered from a decade ago.

What a planning permit is, and when it bites

A planning permit comes from the council's planning department and answers a different question: given the planning scheme and any overlays on your land, are you permitted to build this here, at this size, in this spot? On a plain suburban block with no overlays, a modest verandah in the backyard often doesn't need one. The moment an overlay applies, that changes.

The overlays that most often pull an outdoor build into planning are heritage (the house or the precinct is protected), bushfire-prone (a Bushfire Management Overlay), flood or land-subject-to-inundation, and significant-landscape or vegetation overlays. Siting matters too: if the build pushes past the setbacks or site-coverage limits in the planning scheme's residential provisions, you can need a planning permit even without an overlay. This is exactly why the first thing we do is pull up your property's planning report.

Which comes first

Order matters. If your job needs both, the planning permit comes first, because the building surveyor generally won't issue a building permit that conflicts with a planning permit that hasn't been granted. Chase them the other way around and you can pay for engineered drawings and a building permit application, only to have planning force a change that sends you back to the draftsperson. Sort the 'am I allowed' question, then the 'is it built right' question.

The 'neither' case, and why it's a trap

Occasionally an outdoor structure needs neither — small, open, well clear of boundaries, no overlays. It's tempting to treat that as a green light to build whatever you like. It isn't. Exemption from a permit doesn't exempt you from the rules: the structure still has to be built properly, still can't breach easements or setbacks, and a surveyor can require you to prove an exempt structure actually met the exemption. And if you guess wrong — build something that needed a permit without one — it surfaces at sale, at insurance claim time, or when a neighbour complains, and retrospective approvals are slower and dearer than doing it right the first time.

How the process runs in practice

On a typical roofed build it goes: we work up the design and confirm your planning position; if planning's needed, that application goes in and waits on council; a draftsperson and structural engineer produce the drawings and computations; the building permit application goes to the surveyor with those documents; the permit issues; we build with inspections at footings, frame and final; the surveyor signs off. The build is rarely the slow part — the approvals are, and most of that is queue time you can't compress by pushing.

Related services

Related reading