As you may know, the Victorian Government, through the Office of the Red Tape Commissioner, is currently undertaking a review into the state’s building and planning approvals process. Since the commencement of this review, Master Builders Victoria has consulted regularly with the Red Tape Commissioner on behalf of members, and a number of sector committee members have provided direct feedback to the commissioner at our member forum.

At a broad level, the key issues that Master Builders Victoria and its members have raised with the commissioner are:

• Councils being overly heavy-handed with the need to comply with simple requirements to obtain a planning permit
• Councils not adhering to the 60-day statutory timeframe to determine a planning permit application
• A lack of consistency over simple requirements across councils
• The shortage of building surveyors contributing to delays.

The review also allows MBV members to provide direct feedback to the Office of the Red Tape Commissioner via an online survey. We encourage members to complete this survey given that your experiences dealing with issues in obtaining a planning and building permit will help inform the Red Tape Commissioner’s work on the review.

Click here to access the survey.