New moves have been made to construction industry red tape, which will reduce business costs for builders.

As part of broader red tape reforms unveiled last month by Deputy Premier Peter Ryan and Treasurer Michael O’Brien, changes have been made to walls on boundaries standards.

Following much campaigning from Master Builders and its members, builders are no longer required to apply for unnecessary planning permits to build boundary walls on new homes.

The average height of a boundary wall allowed without a planning permit has been increased from 3.0 to 3.2 metres and requirements for a wall on a boundary from on or within 150mm of a side or rear boundary of a lot have been amended to 200mm. The maximum height of boundary walls remains unchanged at 3.6 metres.

These changes will better provide for modern building practices, including adequate fascia and guttering, better enabling builders to use waffle pods for laying a concrete slab on the ground, promoting efficiency and reducing waste, meet homeowner desires for higher 2.7 metre ceilings and allow the construction of garages under the same roof.

“These reforms will save time and money for builders, councils and Victorian families as they build their new home,” said Planning Minister Matthew Guy.

Other reforms announced that will benefit the building industry include:

  • Removing unnecessary mandatory commercial building defects insurance requirements, bringing Victoria into line with all other states;
  • Providing a faster, more cost-effective domestic building consumer disputes process;
  • Opening up the construction of metal roofs to suitable builders, ending the monopoly plumbers alone have on this work;
  • Reforming prequalification requirements and contracts for companies delivering construction work funded by taxpayers, so they are more consistent across government departments and local councils; and
  • Modernising WorkSafe forms so builders can access them online, print them and save information for use in other forms.

The full list of red tape cuts for the building and construction sector can be found here.

If your local council isn’t abiding by the new walls on boundaries standards, contact our Building Services team on (03) 9411 4555.