What does subdividing a Melbourne block need from a surveyor?

The parcels a plan can create

A plan of subdivision is the instrument that divides land. It allows an applicant to divide land into two or more new parcels of land that can be dealt with separately. The shape of what it can produce is tightly defined: the only new parcels a plan of subdivision can create are lots, roads, reserves or common property. All new plans of subdivision lodged with Land Services Victoria are lodged under the Subdivision Act 1988.

A plan does more than draw lines. As part of the subdivision process, a plan may create easements, owners corporations and restrictions, which are commonly called restrictive covenants. It can also go the other way: a plan of subdivision may remove or vary existing easements and restrictions, with a planning permit or by a planning scheme, under section 23 of the Subdivision Act 1988. The reverse instrument, a plan of consolidation, takes two or more parcels and makes them one, and only one new parcel can be created by it.

One requirement is absolute at the drawing stage: only a licensed surveyor can prepare a plan of subdivision or consolidation. Subdividing your property is one of the situations the Surveyors Registration Board of Victoria names as calling for a licensed surveyor.

Land Use Victoria, Plans of subdivision and consolidation · Surveyors Registration Board of Victoria, FAQ

The permit stage

Before a plan can exist, the subdivision itself usually needs planning approval, and the planning permit is the document that grants it. The permit is the legal instrument that lets a particular use or development proceed on a piece of land; usually it carries written conditions that have to be met, and a set of plans. Applications normally go to the local council, though the Minister for Planning decides some of them.

A planning permit and a building permit are different things, and a project may need both. The rules are local: each council has its own planning scheme, and what has to be applied for varies from one municipality to the next, so finding out whether a permit is required, before the land is developed or its use changed, is the applicant's job.

The application is not a letter. It goes in with a current Certificate of Title, and with copies of any restrictive covenant or section 173 agreement registered against the land. Notice follows: a planning application is advertised unless the council is satisfied that granting the permit would cause no material detriment to anyone, or the planning scheme says notice is not required, and a decision cannot be made until at least 14 days after the last notice is given. Referral authorities have 28 days to respond.

On the decision, two clocks matter to anyone watching. An objector has 28 days in which to lodge an application for review, and if one is lodged the council cannot issue the permit; the decision moves to VCAT. For the applicant, the prescribed decision time is 10 business days for a VicSmart application and 60 days for all other applications. A permit may be granted with or without conditions, and the project can only go ahead once those conditions are met. Even then the permit is not the end: nothing can be acted on until the conditions are satisfied and the council has endorsed the plans.

Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guidance for applying for a planning permit · Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guide to Victoria's planning system, chapter 3

Certification

Certification is the stage that gives a plan a life and a deadline. For a subdivision the certification window is two years, and expiry comes five years after certification. A certified plan's life is five years: it lapses unless it is registered at the Titles Office before that window closes.

In practice, those two sentences are the whole rhythm of a subdivision project. A permit brings a certification window, certification brings a registration window, and each one closes on a date rather than on a promise. The survey work sits on the critical path of both, because the plan that is certified and the plan that is registered are the licensed surveyor's drawing, and only a licensed surveyor can prepare it.

Planning permits run on their own clock as well: a permit usually lasts for two years from issue, unless a condition sets a different period.

Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guide to Victoria's planning system, chapter 3 · Land Use Victoria, Plans of subdivision and consolidation · Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guidance for applying for a planning permit

Registration, and the title diagram

Registration is the moment the plan stops being a plan and becomes the land itself, in record terms. When a plan of subdivision is registered, the plan becomes the title diagram for the new folios of the register. That is why the boundary in the certificate of title band above is the plan: the diagram you see on a new title is the registered plan.

Lodgement is electronic now. Under the Registrar's requirements for paper conveyancing, all plans first signed by the surveyor on or after 1 January 2020 must be submitted in SPEAR. The information that must be on a plan lodged with Land Services Victoria is set by regulation 8 of the Subdivision (Registrar's Requirements) Regulations 2011.

Land Use Victoria, Plans of subdivision and consolidation

When the plan lapses

The lapse rules are the ones to write on the fridge. A certified plan's life is five years, and it lapses unless it is registered at the Titles Office before that window closes. Before that, certification runs on the permit's own timing: for a subdivision the certification window is two years, with expiry coming five years after certification. Miss the registration window and the certified plan lapses with it, so these dates are worth settling with the surveyor from the first day.

Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guide to Victoria's planning system, chapter 3

The timeline

Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guidance for applying for a planning permit · Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Guide to Victoria's planning system, chapter 3 · Land Use Victoria, Plans of subdivision and consolidation

The Melbourne record

Subdivision is older than the grid it happens in. Melbourne dates from 1835, and Queen Victoria declared it a city in 1847, and the city's growth began with the surveyor Robert Hoddle, who in 1837 set out streets and lanes in a grid north of the Birrarung, the pattern now called the Hoddle Grid. Subdivision followed within a few years: on the record, one early special survey in the district was marked out in April 1841 by Thomas S. Townsend, with Robert Hoddle doing field work on the same boundaries later that year, and the owner had the area subdivided during 1841 under a name of his own choosing.

For a Victorian block today, the searchable handle is the plan number. In VicPlan's terms, a parcel is a single piece of land that can be sold on its own, and it is also called a lot, and if you know the plan of subdivision number you can search for the plan online for a fee through LANDATA or an authorised information broker. That plan, once found, shows the break-up of the land it came from, with the lots that can be sold separately.

Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Melbourne's strategic planning history · City of Melbourne, Hoddle Grid: heart of the city · Surveyor-General Victoria, Surveying for Land Settlement in Victoria, chapter 2 · Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Using VicPlan · Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information

See also The old plans and parish plans and Checking a surveyor is licensed.