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 September 2025 with data extracted on 19 September 2025.
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.
Over the coming months, Geoscape products will transition to ‘National’ branding, reflecting our focus on a smarter, safer and more productive Australia and our role in the national interest.
Our data supplier has revised their site logic that determines whether Strata or Lot cadastre parcels are used as the base cadastre and receive a primary link to Planning Insights information. They determined that multiple Strata parcels were being incorrectly assigned as the base cadastre at sites where a single Lot parcel should have been selected instead. They have now used the Lot parcel as the base cadastre where pertinent. Users can still link to these excluded Strata parcels using a secondary linkage (see Planning Insights Product Guide - Annex A) with the cadastre table. This change has resulted in significant decreases in total planning_insights table counts which is most notably evident in QLD, SA and TAS, although all states are impacted. The planning_insights_overlays, planning_insights_zoning and planning_insights_address tables are also affected by this change.
In NSW approximately 20,000 planning_insights records now have a populated value for permitted, permitted_with_controls and prohibited where previously this information was null. This update is due to manual alignment with planning scheme usage documents.
Easement overlays have been added for the states of ACT, NSW, QLD and TAS. This has led to an increase in infrastructure attribute ‘true’ values in the planning_insights table as well as increases to planning_insight_overlays table counts for these states.
The source data used for Central Coast Local Government Area has been updated, resulting in an increase in approximately 13,000 sites flagged with a flood overlay.
The Cessnock flood source was impacting Maitland. This was not intentional and these relationships have been removed.
The flood hazard flood overlay used in the suburb of North Lakes has been excluded from triggering a flood flag in the planning_insights table as it was found to cover the entire suburb and another flood overlay that better describes the planning controls is already present for this suburb. Although this flood hazard overlay references section 10.10 of the control plan, on inspection we have decided that this overlay will be excluded from triggering a flood flag.
The heritage flag has been removed from VIC parcels that intersect ‘Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Sensitivity Area’ overlays that exist around waterways. This change has been applied as it was found in a review that these overlays do not trigger heritage planning controls. This has resulted in a large decrease of heritage flag assignments in VIC (approximately 800,000 records).
There have been some decreases in TAS planning zone linkages due to the transition from the old ‘interim planning scheme’ onto the new planning scheme in Derwent City Council.
The following new planning precinct overlays have been added for NSW: - Accelerated TOD Precinct - Active Street Frontages Map - LMR Housing Area - Town Centres Map These new overlays have led to record count increases of approximately 500,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table for NSW.
An additional planning_overlay_group has been added called: ‘Precinct Structure Plan Area’. This is a re-categorisation as these previously existed under the overlay group of ‘planning precincts’.
Acid Sulfate Soils overlays have been updated by changing the planning_overlay_group from ‘Protection’ to ‘Hazard’.
Mining and Koala overlays have also been added.
ANEF Contours overlays have been recategorized at the planning_overlay_group level from ‘ANEF Contour’ to ‘Infrastructure’. The overlay values have also been adjusted slightly. An additional source has also been added providing coverage into more regional airports.
Bushfire prone areas source data has been updated which has resulted in a reduction of sites with bushfire overlay associated by approximately 34,000 records.
An additional planning_overlay_group called ‘Precinct Structure Plan Area’ has been added. This is a re-categorisation as these previously existed under ‘Planning Precincts’.
Transport-orientated Planning Precincts development area overlays were added for VIC including: - 800m Train Station Buffer Area - BFO - Built Form Overlay - Central Activity District - Central Activity District - Buffer Area - Central Business District - Central Business District - Buffer Area - City Centre - City Centre - Buffer Area - Eligible Future Homes Lots - Major Activity Centre - Major Activity Centre - Buffer Area - Metro Activity Centre - Metro Activity Centre - Buffer Area - Neighbourhood Activity Centre - Neighbourhood Activity Centre - Buffer Area - Primary Activity Centre - Primary Activity Centre - Buffer Area - Principal Activity Centre - Principal Activity Centre - Buffer Area - Principal Centre - Principal Centre - Buffer Area - Regional Activity Centre - Regional Activity Centre - Buffer Area - Regional Centre - Regional Centre - Buffer Area - Regional Retail Centre - Regional Retail Centre - Buffer Area These new overlays have led to record count increases of approximately 2,600,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table for VIC.
New source data was added that relates to an additional planning_overlay_group of ‘Precinct Structure Plan Area’ for WA. This addition resulted in an increase in overlays by ~40,000 sites and ~95,000 total rows.
No new issues to note.
No resolved issues to note.
We have noticed 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 have been truncated to 120 characters for this release and will be investigated with our data supplier. The zone_label2 values provided by our supplier that exceed the 120 character limit are:
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 |
251 |
9,669 |
141 |
0 |
2,931 |
3,230 |
749 |
10,982 |
3 |
27,956 |
Retired |
212 |
5,192 |
36 |
0 |
16,964 |
44,959 |
9,794 |
3,198 |
106 |
80,461 |
|
Updated |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Total |
136,801 |
3,321,459 |
64,247 |
0 |
2,078,448 |
947,971 |
297,696 |
3,105,552 |
1,189,434 |
11,141,608 |
|
% Change |
0.03% |
0.13% |
0.16% |
0.00% |
-0.67% |
-4.22% |
-2.95% |
0.25% |
-0.01% |
-0.47% |
|
planning_insights_overlays |
Total |
787,532 |
12,872,727 |
105 |
0 |
11,971,933 |
8,026,561 |
580,154 |
9,954,259 |
2,928,404 |
47,121,675 |
planning_insights_zoning |
Total |
142,491 |
3,398,742 |
59,923 |
0 |
1,850,577 |
953,740 |
302,148 |
3,189,692 |
1,953,349 |
11,850,662 |
planning_insights_address |
Total |
258,485 |
4,716,146 |
110,833 |
0 |
3,166,025 |
1,042,952 |
337,249 |
4,078,295 |
1,539,403 |
15,249,388 |