Check the use before you sign the lease
Victorian planning runs on defined use terms, and yours almost certainly sits inside a broader one. Reading the zone table for your trade name will tell you nothing.
Where Victoria catches people out
The zone's use table does not mention your business, so you assume it is fine
Use terms nest. A café is a Food and drink premises, which sits inside Retail premises. A childcare centre sits inside Education centre. The parent term is the provision that governs you, and which section of the table it falls in decides everything.
The premises already operated as something similar
Similar is not the same. Moving between defined terms is a change of use, and it brings Clause 52.06 car parking with it — a rate set by use, which can create a shortfall on paper even when nothing physical changes.
You budget for the fitout, not the approval
Planning assesses the use of the land, not your fitout. Liquor is a separate trigger, signage is controlled under Clause 52.05, and a change of use can change the building classification, which is a surveyor question again.
What to use, and when
Planning Insight
$39Reads the zone's use table and schedule for the tenancy and tells you which section your use falls in — permit required, not required, or prohibited.
Detailed Planning Assessment
$399+A written assessment for a change of use application, covering parking, amenity, hours and the decision guidelines the council must apply.
Talk to a planner
On requestFor licensed premises, contested sites or anything where the answer decides whether the lease is viable at all.
Getting started
Check the address before you commit to a lease. The use question is answerable in a day and is far cheaper than discovering it after the fitout has started.
General information about the Victoria planning system, not advice on a particular site. What applies to a property depends on its zone, the controls affecting it and what is proposed.