House Demolition in Brighton & Bayside

Check the overlays before you plan anything else

Everywhere else in Melbourne, "is my place heritage?" is a long shot. In Brighton it is the first question, and often the answer.

Bayside has **23 residential and 3 commercial heritage precincts**, and by name the overwhelming majority are Brighton and Brighton East streets — Grosvenor Estate, Normanby Estate, Elm Grove, Cowper Street, Hartley Street, Munro Street, New Street, North Road, Westley Avenue, Asling Street, Male Street, Moffat Street, Orchard Street and the Brighton Town Hall precinct among them. Under Clause 43.01 a planning permit is required to demolish or remove a building on a heritage place, and there is **no volume threshold**. Any demolition needs the permit.

The overlay almost nobody has heard of

In April 2025 Bayside introduced eight **Neighbourhood Character Overlay** schedules. Every one of them covers Brighton streets, and every one requires a planning permit to demolish a building:

- Trafford Avenue - Cochrane Street, Edmanson Avenue and Ebden Street - Montrose Avenue - Missouri Avenue - Downes Avenue - Meyer Court - Pearson Street - Loller Street

These are recent enough that most demolition websites — and a fair amount of advice circulating online — simply predate them. If your street is on that list, a knockdown needs planning approval regardless of whether the property is heritage-listed. Your planning property report will confirm exactly what applies to your land.

Bayside is also expanding heritage controls rather than winding them back. Amendment C192bays was gazetted on **9 October 2025**, adding Heritage Overlay protection to 51 post-war properties across Beaumaris, Black Rock, Brighton, Brighton East, Cheltenham and Sandringham — mid-century houses nobody previously thought of as heritage. Council also adopted a Heritage Action Plan in March 2025 setting a ten-year program of further identification.

A conveyancing report from two years ago proves nothing about where you stand today.

We check all of this before a single form is lodged, because the alternative is discovering it after you have paid for one.

Section 29A: always required for a full demolition

Council's report and consent under Section 29A of the Building Act 1993 is triggered when demolition exceeds half the building's volume over any three-year period, or affects any part of the street-facing facade. A full house demolition is 100 per cent of the volume, so it always applies.

The detail worth knowing:

- The **statutory fee is $99.30** — set by regulation at 5.75 fee units, not something council chooses. - Council has **15 business days** to decide. That is a statutory period, not a service promise. - The decision is made by the Municipal Building Surveyor. Councillors, the CEO and directors cannot get involved. - Council **must refuse** if a planning permit is required for the demolition and has not been obtained. This is why the overlay check comes first: lodging in the wrong order costs you the fee and several weeks. - A refusal can be appealed to the Building Appeals Board.

If your property faces two streets — common on Brighton corners — demolition affecting either facade triggers consent.

The building permit, and who is allowed to hold it

Demolition also needs a building permit, issued by a registered building surveyor rather than the council planning department. For a house the surveyor has 10 business days to decide.

The application has to include an outline of what is being demolished, an allotment plan showing the building's relationship to boundaries and adjoining buildings, the position of hoardings and barricades, a written demolition procedure — and evidence that **the demolisher has the necessary knowledge, experience, equipment and storage facilities** to do the work.

That last requirement is why Bayside states plainly that demolition permits are very rarely granted to owner-demolishers, and are instead issued to registered demolition contractors. Victoria registers demolishers in three classes — low rise, medium rise and unlimited — each requiring formal qualification and years of practical experience.

Once issued, a permit is not open-ended: work must **commence within 12 months** and be **completed within 24 months**, or it lapses.

Bayside's own permits, which catch people out

**Asset protection permit.** Required before work starts, protecting footpaths, crossovers, roads, drains, nature strips and nature-strip trees. You do not have to go looking for it — council initiates it automatically off the Section 29A notice, inspects the frontage, and posts the paperwork to the registered owner. The application fee is $367, and the refundable bond runs from $2,500 to as much as $50,000 depending on the site.

**Out-of-hours works.** Standard hours are 7am to 6pm weekdays and 9am to 3pm Saturday, and no permit can be issued for building works on a public holiday. If out-of-hours work is approved, every occupant within a 200 metre radius must be given at least two business days' notice. On a Brighton street that is a great many neighbours, so we plan around the standard hours wherever possible.

**Trees.** A permit is needed to remove — or prune more than 10 per cent of the canopy of — any tree whose trunk circumference exceeds 155 centimetres measured a metre above the ground, plus anything on Bayside's Significant Tree Register. Removal is $466 for the first tree. A new state canopy-tree control also came into effect in September 2025, and council has flagged that it is still working through how it interacts with the local law. If a protected tree stands where your new build goes, that permit becomes your critical path.

**Hoardings and street-alignment work.** Any protective structure erected over the street alignment needs its own separate council consent — a different approval from the 29A. And no part of an external wall within three metres of the street alignment may be pulled down except during the hours the building surveyor directs. Brighton's narrow-frontage period cottages hit both of these regularly.

What it costs

For a standard Melbourne house, demolition generally runs **$15,000 to $45,000**. Bayside jobs tend to sit in the upper half of that, for access and heritage reasons rather than anything to do with the house itself.

By construction type, published Melbourne rates run roughly:

- Pre-1960 weatherboard — $50 to $90 per square metre - 1970s to 1990s brick veneer — $55 to $85 per square metre - Double-storey — $70 to $110 per square metre

Asbestos is the biggest single variable, adding anywhere from $2,000 for a small amount of bonded material to $30,000 or more where it is extensive or friable. Site access is the second, commonly adding $3,000 to $15,000.

Other line items worth asking any demolisher about, because they are where quotes differ: waste disposal and tipping, soil contamination testing, geotechnical reports, backfilling and compaction, stormwater diversion, and pools or outbuildings. We would rather itemise these at quote stage than issue variations later.

Worth keeping in proportion: on a knockdown-rebuild of $450,000 to $900,000, the demolition is roughly three to eight per cent of the project.

What is included

**In scope:** temporary site fencing, the demolition itself, removal of all demolition waste, footings taken out to around 1.5 metres, tree and stump removal where permitted, and site clearing. Clearing the site of all debris is a legal obligation under the regulations, not an optional extra.

**Commonly extra:** household contents and rubbish left behind, asbestos beyond what was visible at quote, contamination testing, geotechnical reports, backfill and compaction, and pools or outbuildings.

We also site-scrape where required — removing the top 30 to 40 millimetres of soil, grass and small debris — which is increasingly expected for waste-compliance reasons.

How long it takes

For a straightforward Bayside job with no planning permit required, **six to ten weeks** end to end.

Where a Heritage Overlay or Neighbourhood Character Overlay planning permit is needed, be prepared for **six to twelve months**. The permit carries a 60-day statutory clock, but that clock stops while council seeks further information, during public notice, and while referrals come back — so the elapsed time is far longer than the number suggests. Anyone quoting you two months for a contested heritage demolition has not done one.

Within all that, the physical demolition is three to five days and site clearing about a week. Everything else is approvals and utility abolishments, and those run in parallel — which is exactly why they should all be started on day one rather than in sequence.