Dual occupancy in Victoria — what the new Townhouse and Low-rise Code means for your project
Amendment VC267 rewrote Clause 55 from the ground up. For dual-occupancy sites, the deemed-to-comply pathway changes both the design brief and the risk profile.
Clause 55 is the rulebook for two-or-more dwellings on a lot in Victoria — and it is no longer the Clause 55 most practitioners grew up with. Amendment VC267, gazetted on 6 March 2025, replaced it with the Townhouse and Low-rise Code, applying to applications lodged on or after 31 March 2025. If you are running a dual-occupancy pipeline across the metropolitan councils, the changes are worth understanding in detail.
What changed
The B1–B34 standards are gone. The code restructures Clause 55 into four groups — neighbourhood character (55.02), liveability (55.03), external amenity (55.04) and sustainability (55.05) — with renumbered standards (B2-1, B2-3, B4-4 and so on). Citing the old numbers in a report or a council meeting now dates the analysis instantly.
Deemed to comply has teeth. Each standard is now assessed as deemed-to-comply or not. Meet the standard and the responsible authority cannot ask for more against that matter; meet the relevant standards and third-party appeal rights fall away — objectors cannot take the application to VCAT. For dual-occupancy projects, that converts design discipline directly into program certainty.
Key standards moved. A few examples that bite on typical dual-occ sites:
- Street setback (B2-1). Walls match the abutting allotments or fall back to the Table B2-1 defaults — a shorter default than the old regime in many streets.
- Side and rear setbacks (B2-3). Now an either/or test: comply with the familiar height-based formula (B2-3.1) or the new fixed-setback alternative (B2-3.2). The designer picks whichever suits the scheme.
- Site coverage (B2-5). Zone-calibrated: 60% in the Neighbourhood Residential and Township zones, 65% in the General Residential Zone, 70% in the growth-oriented zones. A schedule can only specify higher coverage — not lower.
- Tree canopy (B2-7). A genuinely new obligation: minimum canopy cover of 10% of site area (20% for sites over 1,000m²), delivered through classified tree types with deep-soil requirements, including a tree in both the front and rear setbacks. On a tight dual-occ layout this is often the standard that drives the siting.
- Overlooking (B4-4). The 9-metre / 45-degree test survives, but bedroom windows are now excluded — a meaningful relaxation for first-floor planning.
What it means for your site
For a typical 650m² dual-occupancy site in Greater Melbourne, the practical implications are:
- Designing to deemed-to-comply is now a strategy, not a nicety — full compliance buys you a decision without objector appeal risk.
- Earlier ResCode analysis matters more. A concept that trades off against a standard needs to know exactly which appeal-risk and discretion consequences follow.
- Zone schedules still vary some thresholds, so the council-by-council reading remains essential — the code standardised the framework, not every number.
Practical advice
If you are acquiring, we recommend a one-page ResCode snapshot before settlement on any dual-occupancy target. If you are designing, we recommend a structured Clause 55 assessment against the new code before drawings reach TP stage. Both are routine parts of our due-diligence service, and both regularly save six-figure rework costs.
The direction of the reform is clear: certainty for compliant proposals, and less patience for marginal ones argued on merit. The answer is not despair — it is earlier, sharper planning advice.