Adelaide Has Redrawn Where Adult Entertainment Premises Can Go

On 10 September 2026 the South Australian Planning and Design Code moved to version 2026.17. One of the two amendments in that gazette, the Adult Entertainment Premises Code Amendment, quietly redrew where a land use can and cannot go across the City of Adelaide.

Before this amendment the phrase "adult entertainment premises" did not appear anywhere in the Code's zone or subzone policy. It now appears 32 times across 15 zones and subzones, and almost all of them are in the city.

The pattern: concentrate, then control

The amendment does two different things depending on where you are.

In ten zones and precincts it introduces policy that development does not include adult entertainment premises. Those are the City Living Zone, the City Main Street Zone, and the City High Street, East Terrace, Gouger and Grote Street, Medium-High Intensity, Melbourne Street West, North Adelaide Low Intensity, Rundle Mall and Rundle Street subzones.

In two it does the opposite, contemplating the use and setting design expectations for it: the Capital City Zone and the Hindley Street Subzone.

Read together, that is a deliberate planning position rather than a scattering of changes. The use is steered away from the retail malls, the main streets and the residential precincts of the city and North Adelaide, and toward the Capital City Zone and Hindley Street, which is where Adelaide's late-night entertainment has always been concentrated.

What the design controls require

Where the use is contemplated, two new performance outcomes apply. Premises must incorporate design measures ensuring the safety and security of employees and visitors, and must be designed to prevent visibility from the public domain into the interior.

Both carry "None are applicable" as their Deemed-to-Satisfy criteria. That matters more than it sounds, and it is the part most likely to catch an applicant out.

Why "no DTS criteria" makes an application harder, not easier

South Australia's Code assesses development against performance outcomes. Where a Deemed-to-Satisfy criterion exists, meeting the number means the matter is settled. Where the DTS says "None are applicable", there is no number to meet. The assessment is made on the merits of the performance outcome itself.

In practice that means the burden shifts to the applicant to demonstrate, in the documents, how the design achieves the outcome. A floor plan that happens to comply will not make the argument by itself. Somebody has to write it.

What to do if this affects a site

If you are considering this land use, or you hold land in one of the affected zones, the first question is which version of the Code your existing advice was written against. Anything prepared before 10 September 2026 does not contain these provisions at all — the words were not in the Code.

A Code interpretation memo is the direct way to get a written answer on how the new outcomes apply to a specific site and proposal. If you are earlier in the process and need to know what applies to a parcel before committing, start with a free SA property snapshot, which reads the zone, subzone and overlays for the address, or a full SA property report if you need the controls set out properly.

The wider lesson

This kind of amendment is easy to miss precisely because nothing visible happened. No zone boundary moved, no Technical and Numeric Variation changed, and the map looks identical to the one published a fortnight earlier. The policy text simply grew, in fifteen places at once.

That is why the version number on a planning report is worth reading before its conclusions are.