Zoning

Your local council and/or city/regional planning authority.

— Michael

Get on the net, find your local city council, check out their web site, and download their dcps (develop control plans)

Ps the fun begins in deciphering them!

I can only speak for NSW, it maybe different in other states.

If you need to know what is permissible in a certain zone, DCP won’t do you any good. You will need to dig up the LEP (local environment plan), some council call it something different. For example Gosford council calls it planning ordinance or something like that.

Once in the LEP, it will list what is permissible in a zone without consent such as fences, carport minor thing; what is permissible with consent (which is what you want to look at) and then finally what’s is prohibited (which you hope you don’t see what you want in that column). That will tell you what you can do in a certain zone.

Generally 2(a) is for single dwelling and it get denser and by the time you hit 2(d) you can build units. Once again it’s different for each council. Once you got that information, you can dig up the DCP which would give you more specific information say you want to build unit, it may give you a different density between 2(c) and 2(e).

Also some council are very very annoying, they don’t have the DCP and LEP on the net, such as Randwick, you actually need to go there and BUY it. Or you can pop into their local library and you can have a look there or the counter at the council itself.

Also note that they don’t tell you what zoning it is for a certain address over the phone anymore, because someone had sued a council because the guy were given wrong zoning information over the phone.

If all else fail, once you know what zone you are in, call the council and ask for a town planner, with any luck, you will get someone that’s reasonable helpful.

I think we need a bit more information before we can help you futher, at least let us know if it is in metro Sydney or not. Because from my own experience, I very rarely see council post their maps on the web. Not sure why they don’t do it, but they sure are helpful.

If it’s in metro Sydney, if you let me know what council it is, I may be able to dig up the link on the web to send you to the right places to look at.

If you are really confuse I think give the council a call and ask for the town planner, they are generally quite helpful.

Oh almost forget that if you are in NSW, you should be able to ask the real estate agent for a copy of the contract, the most important document in there is the 194 certificate, it vary slightly from council to council but generally it will tell you what zone the property is in and also list what is permitted and what is prohibited.

If all else fail, PM me and I’ll take a look at it in my spare time.

Joseph

OK lets run through this step by step,

You should be able to locate blue mountain city council by now, then click on “city development” then “environment plan”, you should reach this place:
http://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/index.cfm?L1=1&L2=556&L3=564

You can see there are a few plans available, you will have to read through them, the one seems to be current is 1991. While there are a couple of draft plans, 1997 and 2002. You will need to pay attention to all of those. The current plan affect what you can do now, however the draft plan could come into effect anytime, even when you are not expecting it to. Better speak to council and find out when they expect the draft plans to be adopted. Otherwise what maybe permitted in the current plan may be banned in the draft (soon to be adapted) plan.

umm, just had a look at the 1991 plan, wasn’t that much help. let’s do a little bit more digging. I suppose country council is slighly different to city council.

WOW.. just doing a bit of looking, it’s actually quite easy with blue mountain council, go to the Map search:
http://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/bmccmap/parcel_search.cfm

type in your address, vola, it gives you what is the zoning for the current LEP, and also show you what is proposed for teh draft LEP. It has a little discrpition on what that zone mean, not much information there, but I’m sure we can find out more about it in the LEP. Or else call the town planner.

I think I’m too tire to keep reading for today, let me know if that help. Else let me know what the zoning as shown on the map search and I’ll take another look another day.

Joseph