New minimum garden area requirement in VIC

Hi all,

I am looking into developing and see that Victoria has passed a new minimum garden requirement in Neighbourhood Residential Zone and the General Residential Zone. Details below:

Lot size Minimum percentage
of a lot set aside as
garden area

400 – 500 square metres 25%
501 – 650 square metres 30%
Above 650 square metres 35%

The council's GRZ also says: Where a vacant lot less than 400 square metres is created, that lot must contain at least 25percent of the lot as garden area.

I am trying to understand how this is going to impact a development site in GRZ1. I have been looking at plans submitted for a site of 1255m2, roughly 18.3m x 68.5m. The plans are in for 4 x 3 bed unit on the site. Lot sizes are 265m2, 190m2, 172m2 and 308m2. This council requires 80m2 private open space (POS), of which 60m2 needs to be secluded private open space (SPOS).

1) Question is how will the newish garden area requirements impact this development if it were to be submitted now. Correct me please, but my thinking is that the 80m2 POS will be the minimum "garden area" so this being 25% means the new lots need to be more than 320m2 in size each. It will make a big difference to developments if this is the case.

2) Secondly, will these new requirements affect splitter blocks if keeping the existing house on the front and subdividing into 2. The front lot has an existing house so is not a vacant lot. If it is less than 400m2 will the garden requirement apply to it?

 

This whole area is in "transition" until some of the meanings/intents are tested and resolved. In the meantime some Councils are confused.

The garden space is just that, an open area to "soften" the site. It includes the POS. The 80sqm is not "garden space" but included in the calculation

Splitter blocks - interesting. If the rear block is a battle axe i.e. no common area, the arm of the battle axe is included in the site area calculation and therefore the garden area requirement. If something needs planning approval the Councils will be imposing "garden space" provisions

Again, so of this needs to be properly teased out

 

Thanks Tufan, is this to be applied per new lot created or on the site as a whole when applying for planning? I.e. if on the site above of 1255m2 so 35% i.e. 439m2 garden space in total? If this is the case then it is a bit better as the units will have to have at least 80m2 per unit so that is 320m2 and with front and back set backs that should fill in a bit of the difference I would think.

If it is per new lot as discussed above, that will make many developments unfeasible and have quite far reaching consequences.

 

Applied to each lot created

It's not in addition to the 40/80sqm private open space. Think of it like a site coverage constraint on steroids..., not an additional over and above private open space

 

Thanks, I think I am coming at this the wrong way. If the private open space is 80m2 (assuming garden is the same), then the maximum building envelope will be 240m2 (being 75%) and lot size is then 320m2. If the building envelope is smaller, this will actually increase the garden as a percentage of the lot size.

Example above, the 190m2 lot has a ground floor area for the unit of 110m2, secluded private open space is 80m2 so 80m2/190m2 is 42% so this exceeds the 25% requirement. This means that the smaller the lot the more the requirement is met in this circumstance.

If the private open space requirement for the area was say 25m2, it would have a detrimental impact as the garden requirement would need to be 190m2 x 25% so 47.5m2, this would impact things if the minimum private open space of 25m2 had been used. i.e. building envelope would have been 190m2 -25m2 so 165m2 before the change. Now it could only be 142.5m2 (190m2 - 47.5m2).

This garden requirement would then seem to impact areas more where the private open space requirement as a percentage of average lot size is smaller as this will effectively increase the garden space % to minimum 25% of the new lot size and decrease the allowed building envelope, assuming all under 400m2.

Sorry for the rambling, I am trying to get my head around it.

 

Yes, i think...last post is a little confusing. The smaller the lot the more difficult it all becomes, the higher the impact on building envelop

Think of garden area as a different measure. It includes all open space on the site with a dimension greater than 1m (but not the driveways). So the secluded POS is part of the garden area.

There's a bucket of other site coverage/permeability/setback etc provisions that all play in concert. So the whole process has just become a little more difficult, more balls to be juggled in the design

 

@RickProp - stick to RGZ and none of these garden rules applies