Tuesday, 16 June 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (22:12): (2589) My adjournment is for the Minister for Planning, and the action that I seek is for the minister to remove development plan overlay schedule 24 (DPO24) in Lancefield. The background details of this issue are complicated, but the human impact is simple and heartbreaking. Residents in Lancefield have land that they wish to subdivide to build new housing, but the overlay makes it practically impossible to develop and they cannot sell the land with such constraints on it. Affected landholders feel completely trapped after years of hopeless struggle and their relationships with their families and neighbours are strained while their mental health continues to degrade. It is time the minister stepped in and put her powers to good use to intervene and resolve what has become an unnecessarily tangled problem.

Planning for DPO24 started back in 2016, from which time there was a pause on all development applications. The overlay applies to three areas covering approximately 150 acres of township land that are zoned residential and are within the settlement boundary that surrounds Lancefield. The overlay was intended to facilitate small-scale infill building to increase the diversity of housing types and to guide dwelling replacements and rebuilds. But instead of facilitating new homes, the overlay is actually functioning as a barrier to all new housing building. Since it was gazetted in 2020, not a single new house has been built within the overlay, which shows that the planning tool is clearly not functioning as intended. Lancefield is a district town identified for future growth and should be contributing towards meeting the municipality’s housing targets. Developing the land would provide around 300 new dwellings in a rural area of Victoria where new homes are hard to find. The purpose of the overlay was not to prevent housing sprawl but to coordinate among groups of landholders on the choice of development plan to maintain town character and style. However, the requirement to secure agreement between approximately 27 landholders has become a fatal flaw that essentially gives each landholder a veto over development.

Shadow Minister for Planning David Southwick recently joined me to meet with two Lancefield landholders who are desperate to develop their land but have been blocked at every turn. They were almost brought to tears as they shared their story of long frustration dealing with this restrictive planning overlay. Almost half of the landholders want to sell or develop but are being prevented from doing so because the others have no interest. Macedon Ranges Shire Council supports the removal of DPO24 and wrote to the Minister for Planning in 2023 pleading for help, but nothing has been done to move forward towards a resolution for this issue. Council has written twice more this year – (Time expired)