Planning Insights Release Report

Disclaimer

Geoscape Australia believes this publication to be correct at the time of printing and does not accept responsibility for any consequences arising from the use of the information herein. Readers should rely on their own skill and judgement to apply information to particular issues.
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Overview

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 ).

Release Summary

This product was released to customers on 23 December 2025 with data extracted on 16 December 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.

Change Notifications

Flood Updates

In NSW, flood source changes in the Central Coast, Nambucca and Shellharbour LGAs have resulted in a reduction of ~67,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table.

Bushfire Updates

In QLD, the old QFS fire overlay source has been replaced with a newer Brisbane fire source, resulting in an increase of ~300,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table.

In VIC, the Bushfire Prone Area boundary has been extended in Corangamite, Ararat Rural City and Nillumbik LGAs, which has introduced ~35,000 bushfire planning_insight_overlays records in VIC.

Heritage Updates

In SA, new ‘Historic Area’ and ‘Heritage Adjacency’ overlay sources were added, resulting in an increase of ~1,127,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table.

TAS Interim Planning Scheme Changes

In TAS, the Hobart LGA has moved from the ‘Interim planning scheme’ to the new scheme with updated overlays. This has resulted in a reduction of ~18,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table. The ‘Interim planning scheme’ is an old planning scheme that is being transitioned away from in TAS - as of this release only one LGA remains on this old scheme.

VIC Precinct Structure Overlays Removal

In VIC, there has been a reduction of ~60,000 records in the planning_insights_overlays table due to the removal of precinct structure plan overlays.

Issues

New Issues

No new issues to note.

Resolved Issues

No resolved issues to note.

Known Issues

QLD zone_label2 values that exceed 120 character limit

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

Non-breaking spaces in planning_insights tables

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.

HTML entities in planning_insights tables

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.

NT linkage to large base Lot parcels that contain other Lot parcels

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.

Image of poor secondary linkage in NT (1) Image of poor secondary linkage in NT (2)

Future Considerations

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.

New overlay_source attribute

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.

New zone_colour and zone_source attributes

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.

Primary Zone Assignment Improvement

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.

Annex A – Release Counts

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

89

7,000

771

0

3,215

2,354

840

9,210

8,783

32,262

Retired

4

3,860

2,988

0

800

906

429

3,220

1,174

13,381

Updated

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Total

136,886

3,324,599

62,030

0

2,080,863

949,419

298,107

3,111,542

1,197,043

11,160,489

% Change

0.06%

0.09%

-3.45%

0.00%

0.12%

0.15%

0.14%

0.19%

0.64%

0.17%

planning_insights_overlays

Total

788,426

12,805,389

121

0

12,272,243

9,153,871

562,046

9,893,833

2,938,162

48,414,091

planning_insights_zoning

Total

142,253

3,385,098

57,655

0

1,857,945

956,421

300,380

3,134,880

1,940,341

11,774,973

planning_insights_address

Total

259,232

4,726,375

111,129

0

3,173,433

1,046,596

338,278

4,090,156

1,543,655

15,288,854