Navigating Victoria's planning scheme amendment VC283: implementing Plan for Victoria
The Victorian Government has formally gazetted Amendment VC283, a pivotal planning scheme change that gives statutory effect to Plan for Victoria. For developers, landowners, and planning practitioners, understanding the new clauses and controls is critical to navigating this new landscape.
What is Plan for Victoria?
Plan for Victoria is the state's long-term planning blueprint, setting a strategic direction for growth and development through to 2050. It replaces the previous strategy, Plan Melbourne, with a consolidated vision for both metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria. The central objective is to facilitate the delivery of 2.24 million new homes by 2051, with a particular focus on providing a diverse range of housing options in well-serviced, established areas.
The plan is structured around five guiding principles:
- self-determination and caring for Country: embedding the rights and culture of Traditional Owners into all facets of planning. The amendment includes a new state-wide acknowledgement of Country in clause 00 of the Victoria Planning Provisions;
- housing for all Victorians: ensuring a greater choice of well-designed, affordable and accessible homes. The amendment gives statutory weight to this by setting housing targets for every local government area in clause 16.01-1S;
- accessible jobs and services: strengthening connectivity between people, jobs and essential services through strategic land use;
- great places, suburbs and towns: creating vibrant, resilient communities with quality public spaces and services;
- sustainable environments: protecting agricultural land and natural resources while promoting climate-resilient urban planning.
Amendment VC283 is the mechanism by which these strategic principles are now incorporated into the Planning Policy Framework.
The new Planning Policy Framework (PPF)
The amendment makes changes to the existing PPF by incorporating the objectives of Plan for Victoria into every municipal planning scheme. This new framework seeks to elevate the state's overarching growth strategy and to ensure the PPF effectively references activity centres, priority precincts and suburban rail loop precincts.
This is further supported by the new definitions for metropolitan activity centres and priority precincts in clause 73.01.
Housing and development targets
Clause 11.02-1S (development capacity) is amended to give weight in the PPF to the housing targets outlined in the Plan for Victoria. The clause is renamed from ‘supply of urban land’ to reflect its broader scope. This change requires councils to ensure their planning schemes provide enough appropriately zoned land to meet their specific, allocated share of the state's housing needs, creating a new accountability mechanism.
New strategies have been inserted into clauses 11.01, 11.02 and 11.03 to align with the principles of providing accessible jobs and services. These changes have broadened the scope of targeted precincts and targeted areas of investment and growth to include the suburban rail loop east precincts, but also future metropolitan activity centres and regional cities. Clause 11.03-1S has been renamed to ‘activity centres and precincts’ to incorporate these future precincts.
Clause 16.01 (housing supply) has also been amended to reflect this push through the inclusion of a metropolitan Melbourne housing targets table, which outlines all growth municipalities and their housing targets, together with greenfield area and established area targets.
Environmental policy
The amendment introduces new policies to address climate change and environmental issues. This includes a new clause 12.06-1S (urban forests), which sets a target for 30% tree canopy in urban areas (on public and private land) to protect and enhance vegetation, and a new clause 13.01-3S (urban heat) to reduce the heat island effect and promote cooler urban environments.
The amendment also introduces new standards regarding the overshadowing of domestic solar energy systems to promote renewable energy.
Suburban rail loop precincts
Several clauses, including 16.01-1R (housing supply) and 17.01-1R (diversified economy), are amended to promote housing and economic growth within the new suburban rail loop precincts. This aligns planning policy with major state infrastructure projects to prioritise higher employment generation within these precincts.
Incorporated documents (clause 72.04)
The amendment introduces a new Industrial and Commercial Land Classifications (Department of Transport and Planning, 2025) as an incorporated document. This inclusion aims to ensure important strategically located industrial and commercial land can be clearly identified to support planning decision making and ensure an adequate supply of land is set aside to support future industry and business growth.
Additionally, four corridor plans have also been introduced, namely the North, South East, Sunbury and West Corridor Plans (Victorian Planning Authority, August 2012).
The way forward
The changes introduced by amendment VC283 are a significant refocus of Victoria's planning policy. The new framework aims to unlock housing supply and deliver on the state's growth targets, while providing greater clarity and certainty in the decision-making framework about the status of Plan for Victoria and housing targets.
This amendment means that decision-makers and VCAT can now reference Plan for Victoria as part of the policy matrix for assessing proposals, particularly where density and underdevelopment or adequacy of housing supply is at issue.
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