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 2026 with data extracted on 21 September 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.
The Northern Territory planning zone source has been updated. This has resulted in count increases in the planning_insights_zoning table and population increases in the planning_insights table for the permitted, permitted_with_controls and prohibited attributes.
The ACT bushfire source has been updated. This has resulted in a ~9% increase in parcels flagged with a bushfire overlay in the ACT.
In NSW, Port Stephens and Hornsby flood sources have been updated. This has resulted in a ~5% increase in parcels flagged with a flood overlay in NSW.
In QLD, Fraser Coast and Bundaberg flood sources have been updated. This has resulted in a ~7% increase in parcels flagged with a flood overlay in QLD.
An environmental hazard source has been added for the Gold Coast in QLD. This addition has caused a ~108% increase in parcels flagged with a industry overlay in QLD.
A mining source has been added for the Gold Coast in QLD. This addition has caused a ~114% increase in parcels flagged with a industry overlay in WA.
No new issues.
Our data supplier has identified duplication of overlays with ‘Precinct Structure Plan Area’ and ‘Road Centre Lines’ overlay_value values in VIC. They have applied deduplication for the September 2026 release. This change has resulted in a valid reduction of ~224,000 records (~2.2% of VIC records) in the planning_overlays table.
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 |
99 |
10,166 |
3,117 |
0 |
72,751 |
3,801 |
839 |
11,062 |
4,617 |
106,452 |
Retired |
33 |
5,166 |
696 |
0 |
61,351 |
1,392 |
317 |
2,845 |
588 |
72,388 |
|
Updated |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Total |
137,422 |
3,336,701 |
64,796 |
0 |
2,109,190 |
962,736 |
300,451 |
3,131,502 |
1,227,586 |
11,270,384 |
|
% Change |
0.05% |
0.15% |
3.88% |
0.00% |
0.54% |
0.25% |
0.17% |
0.26% |
0.33% |
0.3% |
|
planning_insights_overlays |
Total |
399,745 |
10,526,329 |
1,746 |
0 |
16,039,017 |
7,596,770 |
474,541 |
10,098,238 |
3,477,431 |
48,613,817 |
planning_insights_zoning |
Total |
142,814 |
3,398,007 |
60,248 |
0 |
1,895,341 |
970,176 |
303,341 |
3,154,631 |
2,002,564 |
11,927,122 |
planning_insights_address |
Total |
271,836 |
4,764,275 |
114,210 |
0 |
3,266,813 |
1,069,585 |
342,408 |
4,133,127 |
1,579,017 |
15,541,271 |