VicSmart Or Ordinary Permit? The Ten-Day Pathway And What It Costs You

FASTER PERMITS START WITH THE RIGHT ELIGIBILITY.Victoria: test VicSmart requirements before relying on speed.

A two-lot subdivision on a corner block in an older suburb. The plan looks straightforward until the planner points out that a permit is triggered under an overlay, and a covenant may be in the way. You can feel the timeline stretching: sixty days, neighbours notified, objections, maybe VCAT.

Then someone asks the question that changes the project: is this a VicSmart application?

Most small developers in Victoria have heard the term and assume it means “simple project”. It does not. VicSmart is a defined pathway with a fixed list of classes, a short decision window, and a serious trade-off. Understanding that trade-off is the difference between a quiet ten-day approval and a project that gets dragged back into the ordinary process.

The deal question: does this site qualify, and what am I giving up?

VicSmart lives in the Victoria Planning Provisions at clause 71.06, which sets out how VicSmart applications operate. The classes themselves are listed in the zones, overlays and particular provisions, and in clause 59. Clause 71.06-1 sets out the tests for eligibility, and they are cumulative:

• A permit must be required only under planning scheme provisions that are specified as VicSmart classes, and not under any other provision.
• Nothing authorised by the permit may result in a breach of a registered restrictive covenant.

Read those two lines against a real site and the pathway narrows fast. As Planning Victoria's VicSmart permits guide puts it, council guidance is that “if a proposal meets the criteria for a VicSmart application, council must assess the application within 10 days using the VicSmart process. A council cannot choose to assess the proposal using the regular permit process.” There is no discretionary downgrade — but equally, one trigger outside the classes means you never had the pathway at all.

The checks a student would run, in order

1. Enumerate every permit trigger. Zone, overlays and particular provisions. This is the first and most important step, because VicSmart requires that every trigger is a VicSmart class. One Bushfire Management Overlay trigger or a heritage control can end the conversation.
2. Search the title for restrictive covenants. The guide is direct: an application where a permit would breach a registered restrictive covenant is excluded from being a VicSmart application.
3. Check referral requirements. If a referral authority must consent and objects, the pathway can be lost. Confirm the position with the referral authority in writing before you lodge.
4. Read the council's local schedule. Clause 59.15 provides for local VicSmart applications, and clause 59.16 sets the information requirements and decision guidelines for them. The council's own schedule and checklist control here, not the state default.
5. Confirm the fee class. The Victorian planning fees page sets VicSmart fees for 2026–27 by class: $233.10 where the estimated cost of development is $10,000 or less, $500.80 where it is more than $10,000, and $233.10 for a VicSmart application to subdivide or consolidate land. The ordinary permit class for development up to $100,000 is $1,338.40, so the saving is real.
6. Diarise the further-information window. This is the trap. The prescribed time is 10 business days under regulation 32 of the Planning and Environment Regulations, but a request for further information made within 5 business days stops the clock and gives council a further 10 days. Failing to respond by the due date can cause the application to lapse — and a lapsed application cannot be recommenced.

The order, and why the sequence is the whole lesson

The order above is not arbitrary. Each earlier check can invalidate everything after it, so running them in the wrong order wastes consultant money on a pathway that was never available.

If you commission a full planning report and architectural set before confirming that every trigger is a VicSmart class, you have spent the ordinary-process budget on a project that may qualify for the cheap one. If you design before checking the covenant, you may design a building the title will not allow. If you lodge before checking referral status, you can lose the pathway at the gate.

The student habit is to confirm eligibility first, on paper, before paying anyone to draw.

The trap: VicSmart trades away the merits argument

Here is what the ten days actually costs you, and it is the part developers underestimate.

Clause 71.06 provides that a VicSmart application is exempt from the notice requirements of section 52(1)(a) to (d) of the Planning and Environment Act 1987, from the decision requirements of section 64(1) to (3), and from the review rights of section 82(1). Planning Victoria states plainly that “the VicSmart process does not provide third parties with review rights.”

For most small developers, no neighbour objections is a gift. But read the other side of the same coin: clause 71.06 also provides that the responsible authority “must only consider” the decision guidelines and requirements specified for the relevant class of application. The discretion that normally lets a council approve a thoughtful design on its merits is switched off. Your design has to meet the pre-set standards cold, with no argument available about overall acceptability.

So VicSmart is not “the fast option”. It is a different assessment model. If your scheme needs a merits case to get up — an unusual setback, a design response to a constraint, a variation the guidelines do not contemplate — VicSmart will not help you. It will simply assess you against standards you do not meet.

One more trap, and it is terminal: if the application is amended to seek permission under a provision that is not a VicSmart class, it ceases to be a VicSmart application and the regular permit process applies. Design changes made mid-assessment can hand back the ten days you thought you had.

What the answer means for feasibility and the offer

Run the eligibility test before you make the offer, and let it move your price.

Illustratively — and only as an assumption to test — a small two-lot infill that qualifies for VicSmart might carry a council fee in the hundreds of dollars and a decision expected in ten business days, against an ordinary permit in the thousands and a materially longer, notice-and-objection program. That difference lands in three places: your consultant budget, your holding cost, and your confidence in the program you present to a lender.

If the deal depends on the VicSmart pathway to work, treat eligibility as a condition you verify before exchange, not something you discover at lodgement. If it does not survive the test, the project may still be good — but the feasibility must carry the ordinary process, and the offer should reflect it.

The Think Property Club lesson

The discipline is not memorising clause numbers. It is learning to ask a gating question early — “which pathway is this?” — and letting the answer change the plan before money is committed. Pathway first, then design, then price.

That is what turns a hopeful timeline into an evidence-based one, and it is the same instinct a capable student applies to every stage of a deal.

Your next actions

• List every permit trigger for the site and test each against the VicSmart classes before briefing a designer.
• Order a title search and check for registered restrictive covenants.
• Confirm referral authority position in writing.
• Download the council's clause 59.15 schedule and information checklist, and confirm the fee class.
• Diarise the 5-business-day further-information window once you lodge, and respond inside it.
• Write down, for your own records, what you are giving up: no third-party review, and no merits discretion. If the scheme needs discretion, plan for the ordinary process.

Reader question: if your project needed a merits argument to get approved, would your strategy still work?

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