Disclaimer
Planning Insights is a comprehensive representation of planning zone and overlay information applicable to land parcels and addresses across Australia. Planning Insights aims to provide insights to enable a greater understanding of how land can be developed and to inform about limitations and specific characteristics of planning sites.
Geoscape welcomes your feedback on the Planning Insights product. We also publish regular product development updates on our website ( www.geoscape.com.au ).
This product was released to customers on 30 June 2026 with data extracted on 19 June 2026.
This release is a full national data population for Version 1.0 of the Planning Insights product, described by the Planning Insights Product Guide v1.0.
Any issues that have been identified for this release are described in the Issues section.
A range of new hazard overlays have been introduced, covering features such as Acid Sulphate Soils, earthquake risk, and other environmental factors. These additions have led to an increase in records within the planning_insights_overlays table across NT, QLD, SA, TAS, VIC, and WA.
Previously, in the NSW planning_insights_overlays table, our data supplier associated Koala overlays with any cadastre they spatially intersected. Following engagement with NSW councils, we have determined that only cadastral parcels above a certain size are applicable to this overlay. As part of the June 2026 release, Koala overlay links have been removed for cadastral parcels that do not meet the minimum area requirement. This update has resulted in an approximate net reduction of 2.6 million records in the NSW planning_overlays table.
Our data supplier has worked to consolidate overlay_group values for consistency in the planning_insights_overlays table. This change affects QLD (Conservation Area, Hazard), WA (Hazard, Mining), VIC (Hazard), TAS (Hazard) and NT (Hazard) overlay_group values.
The June 2026 release includes an update to planning zone and overlay information within Ipswitch in QLD. This has resulted in significant zone code and name changes, as well as overlay updates (notably flood) in this region.
For the June 2026 release, our data supplier has added new Industry overlays for QLD and WA, along with additional Infrastructure overlays for QLD. These updates have contributed to an increase in planning_insights_overlays records across these states.
No new issues.
There were previously 216 records in the QLD planning_insights_zoning table relating to 8 zone_label2 values that exceed the 120 character limit for this field. These values were previously truncated to 120 characters. These zone_label_2 values no longer exist so this issue is no longer present in the data. The zone_label2 values provided by our supplier that exceed the 120 character limit were:
SA31 - Special Opportunity - Riverview - Kenneth Street, Riverview Road, Station Road, Brisbane-ipswich Rail Line & the confluence of the Brisbane & Bremer Rivers - Including Salv
SA34 - Special Opportunity - Gooda - Bounded by Brisbane-Ipswich rail line & Railway Terrace to the North of the Ipswich Motorway
SU10RV - Special Uses - Place of Worship - including an Auditorium, Administration, Cafe, Meeting House & Caretaker’s Residence
SU54 - Special Uses - Plant propagation and production, wholesale plant nursery and ancillary buildings, structures and access
SU73 - Special Uses - Highway Oriented Uses, Business Uses, Service Trades Uses and Light Engineering/Metal Fabrication Works
SU81 - Special Uses - Highway Service Centre comprising Service station, Automatic/Manual Carwash, Shop not exceeding 100m2 GFA, Restaurants, Fast Food Stores, Accommodatio
TCP - Town Centre - Town Centre Primary Business Area, including land situated at 3, 5, 11, 13-15 and 17 John Street and land situated between John, Railway, Albert and
TCS - Town Centre - Town Centre Secondary Business Area, including alnd situated between Church Lane, Skinner, Albert and William Streets and fronting the eastern side of
There are approximately 22,000 text strings within the planning_insights tables that contain non-breaking spaces (NBSP) within the permitted, permitted_with_controls and prohibited attribute values. We are investigating these values and will look to replace them with ASCII equivalents in a future release.
There are approximately 1,200,000 text strings within the planning_insights tables that contain HTML entities such as non-ASCII right apostrophes within the permitted, permitted_with_controls and prohibited attribute values. We are investigating these values and will look to replace them with ASCII equivalents in a future release.
There are <13,000 Lot parcels in NT that have a poor secondary linkage to Planning Insights. These parcels mostly relate to remote communities. This occurs as there are large base Lot parcels that have a primary link to the Planning Insights data that contain smaller block-sized parcels that inherit a secondary relationship through the larger parcel. The secondary link is likely to produce an incorrect result in these locations, as the larger parcel’s relationship to zoning and overlays does not necessarily translate to the smaller scale. An example of this can be seen at 130.635580,-11.763371, with the secondary linkage Lot parcels (blue) contained within the south-eastern corner of the larger base Lot parcel (red) that has a primary linkage to Planning Insights.
This section outlines enhancements or changes under consideration, but not planned into a specific release. For further details on future initiatives, please contact Geoscape Support.
Geoscape is investigating the inclusion of a new attribute called overlay_source, which would describe the source of the overlay in the planning_insights_overlays table.
This change will result in a minor increment to the product versioning from v1.0 to v1.1.
Geoscape is investigating the inclusion of two new attributes called zone_colour and zone_source in the planning_insights_zoning table.
Zone Colour will provide a colour for each planning zone in hexadecimal format (e.g. ‘#A88484’), assigned on a scheme by scheme basis. Please be aware that this colour information is not consistent between planning schemes. For example, SA Commercial zones may have a different colour to NSW Commercial zones.
To assist in differentiating the planning schemas that provide the planning zone information, a Zone Source attribute will also be included that will provide the name of the zone source.
This change will result in a minor increment to the product versioning from v1.0 to v1.1.
The planning_insights table currently provides a pi_zone_code attribute that provides a single zone code for a cadastre. Where a cadastre relates to multiple zones, a single zone code is consistently selected for the pi_zone_code.
We are investigating with our data provider the option of increasing the intelligence around this attribute so that it represents the planning zone with the largest area of overlap with the cadastre.
Additional, retired and total Planning Insights counts and the percent change to the previous release have been listed in the table below.
TABLE |
STATISTIC |
ACT |
NSW |
NT |
OT |
QLD |
SA |
TAS |
VIC |
WA |
TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
planning_insights |
Additional |
131 |
7,774 |
149 |
0 |
15,469 |
9,468 |
1,702 |
9,083 |
4,393 |
48,169 |
Retired |
19 |
3,945 |
16 |
0 |
3,438 |
1,071 |
374 |
2,787 |
566 |
12,216 |
|
Updated |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Total |
137,356 |
3,331,701 |
62,375 |
0 |
2,097,790 |
960,327 |
299,929 |
3,123,285 |
1,223,557 |
11,236,320 |
|
% Change |
0.08% |
0.12% |
0.21% |
0.00% |
0.58% |
0.88% |
0.44% |
0.2% |
0.31% |
0.32% |
|
planning_insights_overlays |
Total |
398,564 |
10,475,920 |
1,734 |
0 |
15,919,717 |
7,573,558 |
469,825 |
10,322,495 |
3,455,720 |
48,617,533 |
planning_insights_zoning |
Total |
142,739 |
3,393,115 |
57,894 |
0 |
1,883,923 |
967,759 |
302,773 |
3,146,453 |
1,998,350 |
11,893,006 |
planning_insights_address |
Total |
271,841 |
4,750,973 |
114,137 |
0 |
3,225,581 |
1,063,939 |
341,396 |
4,118,305 |
1,572,785 |
15,458,957 |