Secondary Dwelling Code

Between August 2020 and March 2021, a pilot program involving four councils trialled a Secondary Dwelling Code. The councils involved in the pilot were Greater Bendigo, Murrindindi, Kingston and Moreland.

On 8 March 2022 Amendment VC209 was gazetted. This facilitated the end of the Secondary Dwelling Pilot Program by deleting clause 51.06 (Secondary dwelling) from the Victoria Planning Provisions and the Greater Bendigo, Kingston, Moreland and Murrindindi planning schemes.

Secondary dwelling code

The code was prepared to facilitate a secondary dwelling, which is a small dwelling on the same lot as an existing dwelling.

Key aspects of the code to guide the siting and design of a secondary dwelling were:

• a height limit of 5 metres
• a maximum floor area of 60 square metres
• the need to meet the minimum garden area requirements of the zone, along with other siting and design requirements assessed through the permit process
• no ability to subdivide.

The code applied to a secondary dwelling in the following zones:

• Township Zone
• Mixed Use Zone
• Residential Growth Zone
• General Residential Zone
• Neighbourhood Residential Zone.

Findings from the pilot program

A total of ten planning permit applications for a secondary dwelling were received across the pilot councils. Four of the ten applications were assessed through the VicSmart assessment pathway, as an overlay applied to six of the applications. Seven applications were in the General Residential Zone, two in the Neighbourhood Residential Zone and one in the Mixed-Use Zone.

Two of the secondary dwellings contained two bedrooms, the remainder contained one bedroom. The two-bedroom secondary dwellings had an average size of 59 square metres, the one-bedroom dwellings had an average size of 51 square metres.

The valuable data gained from the pilot and feedback from the four councils will inform the further analysis.