A planning property report is a short summary of the planning information for one Victorian address or parcel, and it downloads as a PDF. It is drawn from VicPlan, the state’s online map of planning zones and overlays, and the zone and overlay data behind that map is refreshed every week.
General informationThis page describes the Department of Transport and Planning’s planning property report and its guide to using VicPlan, which was last updated on 7 October 2026. It is not planning advice about any land. The report links each zone and overlay to the local planning scheme, and those provisions are the official text. Planning permits are outside this guide.
What the report carries
The department describes a report as holding every zone and overlay that applies to the chosen property or parcel, with a set of maps linked to the relevant parts of the local planning scheme. Its page lists what a report includes:
- a map of the planning zone
- a separate map for each planning overlay that affects the land
- links to the local planning scheme’s provisions for each zone and overlay
- whether the property is on the Victorian Heritage Register
- whether it is in a designated bushfire prone area
- the Melbourne strategic assessment area
- areas of Aboriginal and cultural heritage sensitivity.
Each zone and overlay has its own code, made up of a colour, letters and numbers. In VicPlan, the panel beside the map shows a selected zone or overlay with its map colour, its code and the planning scheme document that goes with it.
For bushfire, the report has two places to look: the Bushfire Management Overlay appears among the planning overlays, and the bushfire prone area has a section of its own. The department’s guide says bushfire controls apply where either layer crosses the property.
Property or parcel
VicPlan names land in two ways, and a report can be made for either.
- LeftOne parcel, one property: the simplest case.
- MiddleOne property over two parcels: the dashed line is the boundary between the lots.
- RightOne parcel holding two properties.
A parcel is a single piece of land that can be sold on its own, also called a lot, and it usually has one owner. A property is land in common occupation for rates, billing or living in, usually known by its street address or rate assessment number. A property may be one parcel, several parcels, or part of one. When VicPlan identifies a parcel, it writes the lot number and the plan number with a backslash between them.
Finding the land
The search box takes more than an address. VicPlan’s guide lists searches by lot on plan, by parcel or property number, by a council’s property number, by street, locality, postcode, parish or council area, by heritage register or inventory references, and by Crown land description.
A Crown land description is built from a parish name, an allotment number and a section number, and may also carry subdivision, portion and block numbers. Searching one also shows the matching lot and plan identifier.
Two limits catch first-time users. Zones and overlays only appear, and the map can only be clicked, once you have zoomed in to a scale of 1:25,000 or closer. And land that is only proposed, shown on the map in black hatching or cross-hatching, cannot have a report made for it.
The report or the map
The department draws the line between its two products simply. The report suits someone who already knows the address and wants a quick summary for that one property or parcel. VicPlan gives fuller information across a wider area: you can zoom and pan around a whole suburb or council area.
The map also does things a PDF cannot. Its page lists aerial imagery of Victoria, tools to draw on and mark up the map, measuring, a range of extra map layers, and building a map of your own. Selecting a point and using the Identify button shows the zone, overlay or council area at that spot, and a right-click can return the location’s latitude and longitude.
When a zone covers only part of the land
A report says which zones and overlays touch the land. Where one covers only part of it, VicPlan can produce a definition plan: a diagram measuring the distance from the edge of the zone, overlay or bushfire prone area to the property’s boundaries. It is only available for land that is partly affected, never for land that is wholly covered or not touched at all, and it arrives as a PDF by email, which the department says can take up to ten minutes. Bushfire prone areas have definition plans of their own, made the same way.
Looking back with the time slider
Because the map is updated weekly, a report describes the map in the week it was made. VicPlan also keeps what the map used to say:
- Any chosen date
Historic planning scheme layers and past property boundaries can be shown at a single point in time, or across a range from one date to another, using a time slider.
- The last 3 years
A historical amendments layer colours the zone and overlay changes of the past three years.
- Since 2005
A bushfire prone area history layer holds the designations back to 2005.
- 1954, 1959, 1968, 1985
Historic zoning maps from these four years are kept as layers of their own.
So a report made this week and the map of an earlier year can sit side by side. Neither tells you what the map will say next.