Securing a Planning Certificate of Compliance for an existing use can be a very frustrating experience. Councils are typically highly conservative on these matters and the onus on an applicant to provide more than enough evidence of the continuing use, which must cover at least 15 years, is high.

We recently assisted a client with obtaining a Planning Certificate of Compliance for a dwelling in a commercial area of South Melbourne. The zoning prohibits dwellings and past efforts by our client to have the dwelling recognised by Council had remained unresolved, even though the dwelling had featured in a Vogue Living article in the early 2000s!

We were successfully able to have the dwelling formally recognised as being a lawful use by providing a robust planning justification and being dogged in navigating the project through a conservative Council process/system.