In Western Australia, a structure plan is the document that decides what your land can become before anyone talks about a subdivision application. It fixes the road network, the public open space, the residential densities and the staging. Get it approved and you generally have a settled framework for subdivision. Do not have one, on land that needs one, and the Western Australian Planning Commission has very little to work with when your subdivision application arrives.
That single feature separates Western Australia from the eastern states. There is no local council sign-off at the end of the process. Structure plans are advertised by the local government and then determined by the Western Australian Planning Commission (WAPC), and subdivision is determined by the same body. For a developer, the practical consequence is that the entity approving your plan is also the entity approving your lots, and the two decisions are years apart.
The figures, clause numbers and policy positions below were current at the date of writing. Planning rules in Western Australia have been moving steadily since the 2019 planning reform programme, and several of the policies referred to here are under review. The linked primary source is the place to confirm anything you intend to rely on.
The people who hold the answers on your site are your town planner, who reads the local planning scheme and knows which structure planning area your land sits in, and your civil engineer and surveyor, who work out how much of the site actually turns into saleable lots. The structure plan is where those two sets of information meet, and where your lot yield stops being an estimate.
What is a structure plan in Western Australia?
A structure plan is a statutory planning instrument that sets out the intended land uses, layout and staging for an area of land before that land is zoned, subdivided or developed. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage describes it as a plan that “sets out matters that need to be addressed prior to zoning and/or subdivision of an area of land”, designing the layout to enable future subdivision and development, including future land use zones and reserves and estimates of dwelling and population yields (Overview of the WA Planning System).
The machinery sits in Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the Planning and Development (Local Planning Schemes) Regulations 2015. Schedule 2 contains what are known as the deemed provisions. They are automatically read into every local planning scheme in the state, they cannot be varied or excluded by a council, and where a scheme conflicts with them the deemed provisions prevail. So the process for a structure plan in Kalgoorlie is the same process as in Cockburn, even though the two local planning schemes look nothing alike.
Two things follow from that for a developer.
First, the process is predictable in shape. The clause numbers, the advertising periods and the decision timeframes are the same everywhere, so a programme built off them travels between local governments.
Second, the substance is not predictable at all. What the plan has to demonstrate depends on the site: bushfire, acid sulfate soils, Aboriginal cultural heritage, wetlands, groundwater, servicing capacity, transport modelling. The deemed provisions tell you the steps. They tell you almost nothing about how long the technical work in front of those steps will take.
Which structure plan applies to your site?
Western Australia uses structure plans at three different scales, and confusing them is one of the more expensive mistakes a developer can make early in a deal.
District structure plans
A district structure plan sits above your site. It addresses the major structural elements of a future urban, industrial or rural development area, and it can cover multiple suburbs or multiple local government areas. The Western Australian Planning Commission is responsible for determining whether a district structure plan is needed and for providing the strategic direction (WA Planning Manual, District Structure Plans).
These are Commission documents, not landowner documents, although the Commission may invite landowners, their consultants or the local government to prepare the documentation it then adopts. The Manual applies to all district structure plans in metropolitan and regional areas across the state.
Why it matters commercially: if your site sits inside a district structure plan area that has not been settled yet, your local structure plan is waiting on a document you do not control. The Western Australian Planning Commission and the Environmental Protection Authority have published guidance for environmental advice on district structure plans aimed at getting environmental advice in early, which is a reasonable signal of where the delays have historically sat.
Standard structure plans
A standard structure plan is the workhorse. It generally depicts the intended zoning and subdivision layout of an urban, industrial or rural development area, usually a single estate or precinct, and it is the plan a landowner or developer prepares and lodges.
Precinct structure plans
A precinct structure plan does everything a standard structure plan does and adds development guidance for built form and the public realm. It is aimed at activity centres, station precincts, urban corridors, mixed use areas and higher density residential areas. These were previously called activity centre plans, and older documents on council websites may still use that term. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage lists the introduction of “a single planning process for structure plans and precinct structure plans” among the 2020 amendments to the regulations, so the two now run through the same Part 4 machinery rather than separate pathways. The relevant policy is State Planning Policy 7.2 Precinct Design.
Guidance for both standard and precinct structure plans now sits in one document. The WA Planning Manual Guidance for Structure Plans, prepared by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage on behalf of the Western Australian Planning Commission, replaced the Structure Plan Framework (2015) and the Interim Precinct Plan Manner and Form (2020). It also contains the Commission’s approved manner and form, which is not optional: clause 16(1)(a) of the deemed provisions requires a structure plan to be prepared in a manner and form approved by the Commission.
If you are buying a site and the vendor hands you a plan prepared to the old 2015 framework, treat it as background information rather than a lodgeable document.
When does a site need a structure plan before it can be subdivided?
Clause 15 of the deemed provisions sets out three triggers. A structure plan may be prepared where:
- the land is all or part of a zone identified in the local planning scheme as suitable for urban or industrial development, and identified in the scheme as an area requiring a structure plan before any future subdivision or development is undertaken; or
- a State planning policy requires a structure plan to be prepared for the area; or
- the Commission considers a structure plan is required for the purposes of orderly and proper planning.
The first limb is the one to check in due diligence, and it is a two-part test. The land has to be in the right zone and the scheme has to say a structure plan is needed. Most schemes handle this with a special control area or a development zone schedule. The City of Armadale, for example, identifies its structure planning areas on a special control area map and lists them in a schedule to its town planning scheme.
The third limb is the one that catches people. The Commission can decide a structure plan is required for orderly and proper planning even where the scheme does not say so. That is a discretion, not an entitlement, and it can appear late.
Practically, the question at due diligence is not “does the scheme mention structure plans” but “which structure plan area is this lot in, has that plan been approved, and is it still in effect”. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage publishes local planning strategies, schemes and structure plans for every local government in the state, which is the place to check rather than relying on a selling agent’s summary.
Who prepares the structure plan, and who pays for it?
Either the local government or a landowner can prepare a structure plan.
Under clause 16(2), the local government may prepare a structure plan in the circumstances set out in clause 15. Under clause 16(3), a person may apply to the local government for a structure plan they have prepared to be assessed and advertised, provided that person owns any or all of the land in the area covered by the plan, or is the agent of such an owner.
In greenfield Perth, the second route is the normal one. A developer, usually acting for several landowners across a precinct, engages a town planner to lead the plan and prepares it privately, then lodges it with the council for assessment and advertising.
The multiple-ownership point deserves attention. A structure plan area rarely matches a single title. Where a precinct spans several owners, the plan allocates roads, public open space and drainage across all of them, and the burden does not fall evenly. One owner may end up carrying most of the district open space while another gets a clean rectangle of saleable lots. Cost-sharing between owners is a private commercial matter and is settled by agreement, not by the planning system. Getting that agreement in place before the plan is lodged tends to be far easier than renegotiating after the layout is public.
On fees, clause 17(1)(b) requires the local government, on receipt of an application, to give the applicant an estimate of the fee for dealing with the application in accordance with regulation 48 of the Planning and Development Regulations 2009. There is no flat statutory price for a structure plan the way there is for some development applications. You get an estimate, and clause 21 makes clear that the local government bears its own costs of reporting to the Commission to the extent those costs are not payable by the applicant under regulation 49.
That council fee is usually a small part of the total. The consultant team behind a greenfield structure plan may typically include a town planner, a civil engineer, a surveyor, a traffic engineer, an environmental consultant, a bushfire consultant, an urban designer and an Aboriginal heritage consultant. The town planner fees guide covers how that line item is typically structured. Costs vary too much by site to quote a range that would mean anything, but the shape of the budget is worth understanding: the technical studies generally cost more than the plan, and the studies that cost the most are the ones nobody scoped at acquisition.
What has to be in a structure plan?
Clause 16(1)(c) sets a default information list. Unless the Commission otherwise agrees, a structure plan is to set out:
- the key attributes and constraints of the area, including the natural environment, landform and topography;
- the planning context for the area and the neighbourhood and region within which it sits;
- any major land uses, zoning or reserves proposed by the plan;
- estimates of the future number of lots, and the extent to which the plan provides for dwellings, retail floor space or other land uses;
- the population impacts expected to result from implementing the plan;
- the extent to which the plan coordinates key transport and other infrastructure;
- the proposed staging of the subdivision or development covered by the plan.
Two of those are load-bearing for a feasibility.
Estimates of the future number of lots. This is where your yield stops being an internal assumption and becomes a public number that a council officer, a submitter and the Commission all get to comment on. If the acquisition was priced off a lot count, the structure plan is where that count is tested.
The proposed staging. Staging in the plan tends to become the reference point for how servicing and infrastructure obligations are sequenced. A plan that stages the expensive parts of a site early can move a large amount of expenditure forward in the development cashflow modelling, even where the total cost is unchanged.
Beyond the clause 16 list, the Commission’s approved manner and form and the WA Planning Manual set out the information requirements in detail, and the supporting technical work is where the real scope sits. Liveable Neighbourhoods, the Commission’s operational policy guiding structure planning and subdivision for greenfield and large brownfield sites, remains a live reference point, and the Department has noted that it is under review.
How does the structure plan approval process work?
The deemed provisions set out a sequence with hard timeframes attached to some steps and none at all attached to others. The gaps are where the programme risk lives.
Step 1: Lodgement and acceptance
You lodge the plan with the local government. Under clause 17(1) the local government must consider the material and advise you in writing either that the plan complies with clause 16(1), or that further information is needed before the plan can be accepted for assessment and advertising. It must also give you the fee estimate.
Clause 17(2) contains a useful protection. The structure plan is taken to have been accepted for assessment and advertising if the local government has not given you written notice of its decision by the latest of: 28 days after receipt of the application; 14 days after receipt of any further information it requested; or, where a fee estimate has been given, the day you pay the fee.
The trap is that the clock restarts on further information. A council that asks for more information resets the assessment period, and there is no cap in the clause on how many times that can happen before the plan is accepted.
Step 2: Advertising
Under clause 18(1), within 28 days of preparing a structure plan or accepting an application, the local government must advertise the proposed plan, seek comments from any public authority or utility service provider it considers appropriate, and provide the Commission with a copy of the plan and details of the advertising arrangements.
Clause 18(2) gives the local government four advertising methods, and it may use one or more of them: written notice to affected owners and occupiers, a newspaper notice, a notice on the local government website, or a sign erected on the land. In each case the submission period must be not less than 14 days and not more than 28 days, or a later day approved by the Commission.
That is a short public comment window by national standards. It also means the referral responses from utility providers, not the public submissions, are usually the critical path.
Step 3: Submissions and modifications
Under clause 19(1), the local government must consider all submissions made within the advertised period, may consider late submissions, may request further information from the person who prepared the plan, and may advertise modifications proposed to address issues raised in submissions. Clause 19(3) provides that modifications may not be advertised on more than one occasion without the approval of the Commission.
Step 4: The local government report
Clause 20(1) requires the local government to prepare a report on the proposed structure plan and provide it to the Commission no later than 60 days after the latest of: the last day for submissions under the advertising notice; the last day for submissions on any advertised modification; or a day agreed by the Commission.
The report must include a list of submissions considered, the local government’s comments on them, a schedule of any proposed modifications, the local government’s assessment based on appropriate planning principles, and a recommendation on whether the Commission should approve the plan.
Note that this is a recommendation, not a decision. A council resolution not to support a structure plan does not end the process. It goes to the Commission with an unfavourable recommendation, which is a materially different position to a refusal.
Note also the third limb, “a day agreed by the Commission”. Where a council needs longer, the 60 days can move.
Step 5: The Commission’s decision
Under clause 22(1), on receipt of the report the Commission must consider the plan and the report, and may approve the structure plan, require it to be modified in a specified manner and resubmitted, or refuse to approve it.
Clause 22(2) allows the Commission, before deciding, to direct the local government to readvertise if it considers major modifications have been made since advertising. Clause 22(3) limits that direction to one occasion.
Clause 22(5) sets the outer limit. The Commission is taken to have refused to approve a structure plan if it has not decided within 120 days of the day the local government provides the report, excluding any period between the Commission requiring modifications and the resubmission of the modified plan, or within a longer period agreed in writing between the Commission and the person who prepared the plan.
Two features of that provision matter to a developer. The deemed refusal is what gives you standing to go to the State Administrative Tribunal rather than waiting indefinitely. But clause 22(6) provides that the Commission may still decide after the period has expired, and the validity of that decision is not affected by the expiry. So a deemed refusal is a right to seek review, not an end to the assessment.
Clause 22(4) is worth knowing as well: if the Commission is not given a report in accordance with clause 20(1), it may decide in the absence of the report.
Step 6: Publication and review
If the Commission approves a structure plan, clause 26 requires it to publish the plan in any manner it considers appropriate, and the local government may publish it on its website.
Clause 25 gives a right of review. A person who prepared a structure plan may apply to the State Administrative Tribunal for review, in accordance with Part 14 of the Planning and Development Act 2005, of a decision by the Commission not to approve the plan.
Read that clause carefully. The right sits with the person who prepared the plan, and it attaches to a decision not to approve. It is not a general right for any objector or adjoining owner to challenge an approval.
How long does a structure plan take?
Adding up only the statutory timeframes gives you roughly seven to eight months from acceptance: up to 28 days to advertise, up to 28 days of submissions, up to 60 days for the local government report, up to 120 days for the Commission’s decision.
Almost nobody experiences that as the elapsed time, for reasons that are visible in the clauses themselves.
The technical studies come first and sit outside the process entirely. Nothing in Part 4 constrains how long it takes to complete a bushfire assessment, a district water management strategy, a traffic impact assessment, an Aboriginal cultural heritage due diligence or a servicing agreement with a utility provider. On a constrained greenfield site this phase can comfortably exceed the entire statutory process.
The clause 17 further-information loop restarts the acceptance clock, and there is no limit on iterations.
The clause 22(5) exclusion for modification periods is open ended. Time between the Commission requiring modifications and you resubmitting does not count towards the 120 days, so a modification request effectively pauses the clock for as long as the modification takes.
And clause 20(1)(c) allows the local government report deadline to move by agreement with the Commission.
For a feasibility, the honest way to handle this is a range rather than a point estimate, with the land holding costs modelled across the range. On a site held with debt, the difference between an eighteen-month structure plan and a three-year one is rarely a rounding error, and it is a difference the planning system does not underwrite.
How long does an approved structure plan last?
Clause 28(1) provides that the approval of a structure plan has effect for a period of 10 years commencing on the day the Commission approves the plan, or another period determined by the Commission, unless the Commission earlier revokes its approval, or a scheme amendment covering the area takes effect under section 87 of the Planning and Development Act 2005.
Clause 28(2) contains a transitional rule that has caused real disruption. A structure plan approved before the commencement day of the 2015 regulations is taken to have been approved on commencement day. Commencement day was 19 October 2015.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Every pre-2015 structure plan in Western Australia was carrying a notional approval date of 19 October 2015, and every one of them reached its ten-year expiry on 19 October 2025 unless something was done about it. The City of Armadale’s published position is that the ten-year duration of approval of many structure plans lapsed on 19 October 2025 and onwards, that the City completed an audit of expiring structure plans and obtained extensions from the Western Australian Planning Commission for various plans, and that the Commission did not grant an extension for one of them (City of Armadale, Structure Plans).
This is not an obscure point. Regulation 79 of the 2015 regulations continued older instruments as structure plans, and its table converts an outline development plan, a development plan or a subdivision guide plan into a structure plan. A great many legacy plans across Perth were caught by that conversion, and then by the 19 October 2015 deeming, and then by the ten-year clock.
Three mechanisms exist around it.
Extension. Under clause 28(3) the Commission may extend the period of approval where there are no changes to the terms of the plan or the conditions attached to the approval. The condition is doing a lot of work in that sentence: an extension is available for an unchanged plan, not a revised one. There is a dedicated form for it, Form 5D, Application to extend the approval period of a structure plan, published with the other structure plan forms by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage.
Amendment. Clause 29(4) provides that an amendment to a structure plan does not extend the period of approval unless, at the time the amendment is approved, the Commission agrees to extend the period. Amending a plan late in its life without asking for an extension at the same time is a straightforward way to end up with a freshly amended plan that expires shortly afterwards.
Revocation. Clause 28(4) allows the Commission to revoke its approval where it considers the plan cannot be effectively implemented because of a legislative change or a change in a State planning policy.
There is also the scheme amendment route. Once the local planning scheme is amended so that the area carries the zones the structure plan contemplated, the plan has largely done its job. Clause 35A of the deemed provisions requires an amendment to a local planning scheme that affects a structure plan area to state whether the approval of the structure plan is to be revoked, the plan is to be amended in accordance with the statement, or the approval is not affected. Councils describe this as normalising the zoning.
For a developer, the due diligence question on any site sitting inside an existing structure plan is short: when was the plan approved, when does it expire under clause 28, and has an extension been granted. A structure plan you assumed was in place, which expired while the deal was being negotiated, changes the assessment pathway for everything that follows.
What legal weight does an approved structure plan carry?
Less than most people assume, and this is one of the more misunderstood features of the Western Australian system.
Clause 27(1) provides that a decision-maker for an application for development approval or subdivision approval in an area covered by an approved structure plan “is to have due regard to, but is not bound by, the structure plan when deciding the application”.
Due regard is a real obligation. It is not a binding one. An approved structure plan is a strong statement of what the Commission considered orderly and proper planning at the time of approval, and departing from it requires a reason. It is not a zoning, it is not a development approval, and it does not guarantee that a subdivision consistent with it will be approved.
That cuts both ways in a feasibility. On the upside, a minor departure that improves an outcome is not automatically fatal. On the downside, a structure plan approval is not the risk-free milestone that a rezoning is, and pricing land as though it were tends to overstate certainty.
Clause 27(2) covers the reverse case. Where an area is one for which a structure plan may be prepared under clause 15 but no plan has been approved, a decision-maker may still approve a development or subdivision application if satisfied that the proposal does not conflict with the principles of orderly and proper planning and would not prejudice the overall development potential of the area.
So subdivision without an approved structure plan is legally possible. Both tests have to be satisfied, and the second one is demanding on a large greenfield holding, because it asks the decision-maker to be satisfied that carving out your lots does not compromise the eventual planning of everything around them. On a small infill site inside a larger structure planning area the argument is more available. On a broadacre parcel it usually is not.
Clause 24 is a related mechanism. The Commission may approve a structure plan that provides for further details of a proposed subdivision to be submitted and approved before the subdivision is approved under Part 10 of the Act, but only where satisfied that the further matters would not result in a substantial departure from the plan.
How does a structure plan sit alongside rezoning, region schemes and urban deferment?
In greenfield Perth, structure planning is one stage in a longer sequence, and understanding where your site sits in that sequence is usually more important than understanding the structure plan process itself.
Above the local planning scheme sit the region schemes. There are three: the Metropolitan Region Scheme, the Peel Region Scheme and the Greater Bunbury Region Scheme. Where a region scheme applies, the local planning scheme must be consistent with it, and the region scheme prevails on any inconsistency.
Land in the region schemes can be zoned urban deferred or industrial deferred. Under clause 23 of the Metropolitan Region Scheme and clause 13 of the Peel and Greater Bunbury Region Schemes, land in a deferred zone may be transferred to the urban or industrial zone by resolution of the Western Australian Planning Commission, notified in the Government Gazette. The current guidance is the Commission’s Lifting of Urban and Industrial Deferment guidelines, which supersede the 2019 urban deferment guidelines and the 2014 Greater Bunbury industrial deferment guidelines.
If your land is urban deferred, the deferment normally has to be lifted before the sequence can continue. That is a Commission resolution, gazetted, and it is not on your programme to control.
The full sequence on a typical greenfield site therefore tends to run: region scheme zoning, including lifting of any deferment; district structure plan where one is required; local planning scheme amendment to bring the local zoning into line; structure plan; subdivision application to the Commission; conditions and clearances; deposited plan lodged with Landgate; new titles.
Local planning scheme amendments are themselves categorised as basic, standard or complex under the 2015 regulations, with different consultation requirements. Notably, an amendment to the scheme map that is consistent with an approved structure plan can qualify as a basic amendment where the scheme already includes zones of all the types outlined in the plan, which is one of the few places where getting the structure plan right first genuinely shortens a later step.
At the subdivision end, the Commission’s published process runs to 90 days, with referrals to agencies in the first 42 days, and a preliminary approval that has effect for three years for five lots or less and four years for more than five lots, extendable by a further two years in extenuating circumstances. Failure by the Commission to determine within 90 days is a deemed refusal that triggers a right of review to the State Administrative Tribunal. Once conditions are cleared and a deposited plan is approved, the applicant has two years to apply to the Registrar of Titles for the new titles.
Those durations matter for a structure plan, because they set how much of the plan you can realistically convert to titles inside one approval period, and how the staging in the plan should be sequenced against the ten-year clock in clause 28.
Where do public open space and infrastructure contributions hit the feasibility?
This is where a structure plan turns into a number.
Public open space
The Western Australian Planning Commission’s Development Control Policy 2.3, Public Open Space in Residential Areas, has long set the position that generally 10 per cent of the gross subdivisible area of a conditional subdivision is to be given up free of cost by the subdivider for public open space and vested in the Crown as a reserve for recreation. The Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries summarises the same 10 per cent position and notes that gross subdivisible area excludes land for schools, shopping centres, infrastructure such as sewer pump station sites, dedicated drainage sites without a recreation function, and land set aside for arterial roads and other non-residential uses (key State Government planning instruments relating to public open space).
The Commission has advertised a draft Operational Policy 2.3, Planning for Public Open Space, intended to replace Development Control Policy 2.3 and the position statement on expenditure of cash in lieu. Confirm the current status before relying on either document, because a change here moves a percentage that sits directly on top of your saleable area.
Two things to watch on your own plan. The exclusions from gross subdivisible area are as commercially significant as the percentage itself, because they determine the base the 10 per cent applies to. And the structure plan is the document where the actual public open space allocation is drawn and fixed, which is generally harder to revisit at subdivision stage than to argue at structure plan stage.
Infrastructure contributions
State Planning Policy 3.6 Infrastructure Contributions, gazetted on 30 April 2021, sets out the principles that apply to development contributions for infrastructure in new and established urban areas, and the form, content and process to be followed. Where a development contribution plan applies, contributions are typically payable at subdivision or development stage across a defined development contribution area.
A structure plan and a development contribution plan are separate instruments, and the sequencing between them varies by council. The question to settle early is whether a development contribution plan already applies to your land, whether one is proposed, and what the current cost contribution rate is. That rate is a per lot or per dwelling cost line in the feasibility, and in some Perth growth areas it is not small.
The Department has noted that further consultation would inform amendments to the 2015 regulations required to support implementation of State Planning Policy 3.6, including a right of independent review for developers through the State Administrative Tribunal. Check where that has landed before assuming a review right exists.
How a structure plan changes the numbers in your feasibility
The mechanism is simple: a structure plan converts gross site area into net saleable area, and net saleable area is what your revenue is built on.
Take an illustrative 20 hectare greenfield parcel in outer metropolitan Perth. These inputs are chosen to show the arithmetic, not to represent any particular market.
Suppose the structure plan takes 1.2 hectares for a district distributor road reserve and 0.8 hectares for a drainage and conservation area with no recreation function. Gross subdivisible area is then 18 hectares.
Public open space at 10 per cent of that gross subdivisible area is 1.8 hectares, ceded free of cost. That leaves 16.2 hectares. Assume internal roads and verges absorb 25 per cent of the balance, or 4.05 hectares, which leaves net saleable area of 12.15 hectares, or 121,500 square metres. At an average lot size of 375 square metres, the yield is 324 lots.
Now change one input. Suppose the structure plan process lands public open space at 12 per cent rather than 10 per cent, because the layout needs a larger district park. Everything else is held constant.
Public open space becomes 2.16 hectares, leaving 15.84 hectares. Roads at 25 per cent take 3.96 hectares, leaving net saleable area of 11.88 hectares, or 118,800 square metres. At the same 375 square metre average lot size, the yield is 316 lots, using whole lots.
Eight lots. At an assumed gross realisation of $340,000 per lot, that is roughly $2.7 million of gross realisation, on a two percentage point movement in a single input that is settled during the structure plan process and is very difficult to revisit afterwards.
That is why the structure plan tends to be the point where a greenfield feasibility either holds or does not. The other inputs the plan fixes and that behave the same way are the road hierarchy, which drives civil cost, the lot mix and density coding, which drives average lot price, and the staging, which drives when money moves. Where the plan is fixing staging over a multi-year horizon, a scheduled cashflow that phases civil works and lot releases against the approval sequence tends to be more useful than a single blended feasibility.
For a site being acquired before the structure plan is settled, the highest and best use analysis is doing a lot of work, because the yield is an assumption rather than an approved number. Structuring an acquisition so that price or settlement responds to the structure plan outcome is a commercial and legal question for your lawyer, not a planning one, but it is the question the arithmetic above tends to raise.
How structure planning in Western Australia differs from the eastern states and New Zealand
The name travels. The machinery does not.
In Western Australia, the structure plan is a statutory instrument under Part 4 of the deemed provisions, prepared by a landowner or a council, advertised by the council, and determined by the Western Australian Planning Commission. Subdivision is then also determined by the Commission rather than the council, under Part 10 of the Planning and Development Act 2005. That single decision-maker for both stages is unusual in Australia and is the feature most likely to surprise a developer arriving from the east coast, where subdivision in Victoria and in New South Wales runs through the council.
Victoria uses precinct structure plans for greenfield growth areas, but they are incorporated into planning schemes through the scheme amendment process rather than approved as a standalone instrument by a central commission. New South Wales has no direct equivalent at all: the closest process is a planning proposal to amend a local environmental plan, followed by a development application, with subdivision handled as a form of development.
In New Zealand, structure plans are used but they are a method councils may adopt rather than a statutory instrument with its own approval pathway. Where a structure plan is to carry regulatory weight it is generally incorporated into a district plan, and a district plan change follows the Schedule 1 process under the Resource Management Act 1991, supported by an evaluation under section 32. The contents of district plans are governed by section 75 of the Resource Management Act 1991. The Act is being replaced, so a New Zealand developer should treat any structure planning pathway as subject to the Resource Management Act reform timetable rather than as settled.
The general lesson for anyone modelling across states is that “structure plan approved” does not mean the same thing in Perth as it does in Melbourne. In Western Australia it means the Commission has approved a plan that decision-makers must have due regard to but are not bound by, that expires after 10 years, and that still needs a separate subdivision approval from the same body.
What to ask your town planner
These are the questions that decide the topic on your facts, and that a guide cannot answer for your site.
- Which structure plan area, if any, does this land sit in under the local planning scheme, and which limb of clause 15 applies?
- Is there an approved structure plan covering this land, when was it approved, and when does it expire under clause 28? Has an extension been granted?
- If the plan was originally an outline development plan, development plan or subdivision guide plan, has the clause 28(2) deeming to 19 October 2015 been considered?
- Is there a district structure plan over this precinct, is it approved, and does our local structure plan depend on it?
- Is the land urban deferred or industrial deferred under a region scheme, and what would it take to have deferment lifted?
- Will a local planning scheme amendment be needed as well, and would it be basic, standard or complex?
- Should this be a standard structure plan or a precinct structure plan under the current WA Planning Manual guidance?
- What is the realistic advertising and referral programme, and which utility or agency referral is most likely to sit on the critical path?
- What is the local government’s fee estimate under regulation 48, and what is their current turnaround on structure plan reports?
- Does a development contribution plan apply or is one proposed, and what is the current rate?
What to ask your civil engineer and surveyor
- What is the gross subdivisible area on this title once road reserves, drainage without a recreation function and non-residential land are excluded?
- What public open space percentage does the layout actually deliver, and where is the flexibility?
- What proportion of the balance goes to roads and verges under the road hierarchy this plan proposes?
- What net saleable area and lot yield does that produce, and how sensitive is it to the public open space and road assumptions?
- Which servicing constraints, drainage, water, sewer, power, could change the layout after the plan is advertised?
- What does the staging in the plan imply for the sequence and timing of civil expenditure?
What to ask your lawyer
- If we are acquiring before the structure plan is settled, how should price or settlement respond to the approved yield?
- Where the structure plan area spans multiple owners, what agreement do we need in place on cost sharing for public open space, roads and drainage before the plan is lodged?
- What are our options if the Commission is taken to have refused the plan under clause 22(5), given that it may still decide after that period expires?