Planning and development advocacy

Towering server racks in a data center, bathed in red and teal light

The City of Whittlesea advocates for planning policies and processes that support sustainable growth, protect our local communities and ensure development delivers positive outcomes for residents.

Council’s advocacy regarding planning and development matters is currently focused on:

Data centres

Data centres are a modern infrastructure supporting nearly all digital and cloud-based activities, from everyday business operations to advanced AI workloads. The Victorian Government has prioritised data centre development, recognising its importance in supporting business continuity, public services, and economic resilience.

Data centre planning permit applications are often able to by-pass local government planning approval and community consultation through the Victorian Government’s Development Facilitation Program (DFP) removing the role of council as a decision maker and community in public notification processes.

The issue is not whether Victoria needs data centres. It is where they should be located, how their impacts are managed and who has a voice in those decisions.

For details on current data centre applications in the City of Whittlesea visit the Data centres page.

Victorian Government’s Development Facilitation Program (DFP)

The Victorian Government’s Development Facilitation Program (DFP) allows significant development proposals to bypass the traditional local planning approval process, with decisions made directly by the Minister for Planning rather than local councils.

This can mean limited or no community consultation, limited Council influence on the outcomes and no pathway for third-party review at VCAT. Additionally, the environmental, health, amenity and infrastructure impacts can be significant, with minimal tangible benefit for our community.

Good planning to facilitate the delivery of quality homes

The City of Whittlesea is a committed partner to the State Government in strengthening the planning system to deliver better outcomes for our community.

A genuine partnership between State and Local Government is essential to achieving better planning and housing outcomes, including:

Partnering with local government to improve planning system and decisions
Addressing land availability as a barrier to timely infrastructure delivery
Protecting environmentally sustainable development (ESD) standards through planning reforms
Maintaining and increasing tree canopy coverage as our community grows.

Windfall Gains Tax

When land is rezoned to residential use it can trigger a value uplift that incur a State Government Windfall Gains Tax. This tax can be significant and become a barrier to unlocking housing on council land by making a project ultimately commercially unviable.

An exemption to local councils from the Windfall Gains Tax on rezoning publicly owned land for housing would support the rapid delivery of affordable and well-located housing.