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Town planning in the City of Greater Geelong.

Geelong · Ocean Grove · Leopold · Lara · Armstrong Creek · Drysdale · Barwon Heads

Greater Geelong is Victoria's second city and effectively a metropolitan planning system of its own: a growing CBD with height and design frameworks, the Armstrong Creek growth corridor delivering greenfield suburbs, coastal towns from Ocean Grove to Barwon Heads under firm settlement boundaries, and a heritage core of Victorian-era fabric.

The Bellarine's coastal towns deserve particular care — protected by design controls, vegetation overlays and town boundaries that reflect decades of community insistence that they remain towns rather than suburbs.

Our Geelong-region work includes activity-centre development on the Bellarine — the Kingston activity centre at Ocean Grove among it — alongside residential and coastal-town matters. Geelong assesses like a capital-city council, with urban design input on anything of scale, and the Bellarine towns add community scrutiny that applications need to be built for.

The planning framework

Controls you'll commonly meet in Greater Geelong.

Every property is different — these are the zones and overlays that most often shape applications in this municipality. Each links to the current ordinance in the Greater Geelong planning scheme.

FAQs

Questions we’re asked most.

If you have a question that’s not here, call us — we answer honestly, whether or not it leads to work.

  • Inside the town boundaries, conventional residential development subject to the coastal design controls — heights and siting are managed to protect the towns' scale, and vegetation overlays protect the canopy that defines them. Outside the boundaries, the answer is deliberately very little: the settlement boundaries on the Bellarine are among the most firmly held in Victoria.

Got a site, a permit, or a refusal on your desk?

An obligation-free conversation is the fastest way to see if we can help. We respond within 24 hours — usually much sooner.