Excavation permits and council approval in Casey.
Nine times out of ten your building permit already covers the dig and you need nothing else. The tenth time is an overlay you did not know was on your title, and it turns a three-day job into a four-month one. This page is the map of which is which, written from actually lodging this stuff with City of Casey rather than from reading the planning scheme.
What needs a permit and what does not.
Usually not a separate one. If the excavation is part of an approved building permit - a new home, an extension, a garage, a pool - and it is residential cut or fill under about one metre, outside any overlay, the building permit covers it and there is no separate planning application. Where you do need a planning permit from City of Casey is bulk earthworks over roughly 100 cubic metres of cut or fill, any work inside a Vegetation Protection Overlay, Significant Landscape Overlay, Environmental Significance Overlay or Heritage Overlay, and most work that changes drainage across a boundary. The overlays are the trap - they are scattered through older Berwick, Harkaway, Narre Warren North and parts of central Cranbourne where you would never expect them.
Two permits get confused constantly. A building permit comes from a registered building surveyor, private or council, and it is about whether the structure complies with the National Construction Code. A planning permit comes from City of Casey and it is about whether the land use and the works are allowed on that particular piece of land under the planning scheme. Earthworks can trip the second without touching the first, which is why "but I have a permit" is not the end of the conversation.
Check your title and your planning property report before you commit to a program. Every Victorian property has a free planning property report available online listing the zone and every overlay applying to it. It takes two minutes and it is the single highest-value thing a Casey homeowner can do before booking earthworks.
What a Casey planning permit actually costs you.
Budget six to eight weeks from lodgement for a straightforward application, and three to five months if it triggers public notice or a referral to Melbourne Water or a service authority. Application fees for earthworks-related permits typically land between $1,200 and $3,000 depending on the value of the works, and you will usually need a site plan with existing and proposed levels, a cross-section, and sometimes an arborist report. The clock does not start until the application is deemed complete, so an incomplete lodgement can quietly cost you a month before anyone tells you.
The Melbourne Water referral is the one that surprises Casey people. Large parts of the LGA sit in declared flood or drainage catchments, particularly around the Cranbourne and Clyde flats and along the Eumemmerring and Hallam Valley drainage lines. If your earthworks change flood storage or overland flow, Melbourne Water gets a say, and their assessment runs on its own timeline regardless of how quickly council moves.
Then there is stormwater. A legal point of discharge is council's written determination of exactly where your site stormwater is allowed to leave the property - a street kerb, an easement pit, or a Melbourne Water asset. You need it before any new or altered stormwater drainage, and your building surveyor will ask for it. City of Casey issues it on application, typically for a fee in the $150-$250 range with a turnaround of a couple of weeks. Digging a stormwater line to where you assume it should go, without that determination, is how people end up re-excavating a finished driveway. Our drainage trenching quotes always state which discharge point we have designed to.
A driveway that needed an arborist, Narre Warren North.
Established block, owner wanted a new 85m² concrete driveway to replace a failing one. Straightforward job on paper: $6,800 for cut and sub-base, three days. Except the property carried a Vegetation Protection Overlay and a mature river red gum sat about five metres off the proposed driveway line.
Possibly, and this is the most common thing people get caught by. If a tree is protected under a Vegetation Protection Overlay or is a significant tree on council's register, works inside its Tree Protection Zone need approval, and the TPZ under AS 4970 is calculated as twelve times the trunk diameter at breast height - so a 600mm trunk gives you a 7.2 metre radius. That is a big circle, and it routinely captures a driveway line or a footing that nobody expected to be a problem. Where we cannot avoid the zone we hand-dig or use non-destructive methods and work to an arborist's direction.
What it cost in the end: arborist report $850, planning permit application $1,450, eleven weeks of assessment, and a revised design that pulled the driveway 1.4 metres across and used a no-dig pavement build-up over the root zone rather than a conventional cut. The earthworks themselves went from $6,800 to $9,200 because hand-excavation and a permeable build-up in the TPZ are slower. Total impact: $850 plus $1,450 plus $2,400 of extra earthworks, so about $4,700 and three months on a job that was quoted at $6,800 and three days.
None of that was avoidable. All of it was foreseeable, from a free planning property report at the start. That is the entire argument for checking before you book. See driveway preparation for how the sub-base is built either way, and the pricing guide for the underlying rates.
AS 3798, AS 2870 and the WorkSafe depth rule.
AS 3798, the guideline for earthworks on commercial and residential developments, applies in full to commercial and subdivision work - warehouse pads, car parks, civil estate works - and it brings mandatory geotechnical supervision with testing of each fill lift at a specified frequency. On domestic sites it applies wherever the engineer or the building surveyor calls it up, which in practice is most controlled-fill house pads in Casey. The important part for a homeowner is the testing: fill placed under a slab needs to be verified to the specified density, and an untested pad can stall your slab inspection.
AS 2870 is the residential slabs and footings standard, and it is where your site classification comes from - Class A through to Class P. Most of north-west Casey is Class M to H1 reactive clay; most of the south-east growth corridor is Class P to M. That letter drives your footing design, and it drives what we have to do to the subgrade. The City of Casey overview maps the two soil zones in more detail.
WorkSafe Victoria's Excavation Compliance Code is the safety layer, and the number to remember is 1.5 metres. Any trench deeper than that must be shored, benched or battered to an engineered slope, with a documented Safe Work Method Statement. It is not a guideline. In Casey clay, which stands up beautifully right until it does not, it is the rule that keeps people alive. Before any of it, a Before You Dig Australia enquiry goes in - free, plans back in about two business days, and the thing your insurer will ask for first. Our service strike and insurance page explains why that matters more than the permit does.
Casey suburbs we cover.
Permit and approval questions.
Do I need a permit to excavate on my own block in the City of Casey?
Usually not a separate one. If the excavation is part of an approved building permit - a new home, an extension, a garage, a pool - and it is residential cut or fill under about one metre, outside any overlay, the building permit covers it and there is no separate planning application. Where you do need a planning permit from City of Casey is bulk earthworks over roughly 100 cubic metres of cut or fill, any work inside a Vegetation Protection Overlay, Significant Landscape Overlay, Environmental Significance Overlay or Heritage Overlay, and most work that changes drainage across a boundary. The overlays are the trap - they are scattered through older Berwick, Harkaway, Narre Warren North and parts of central Cranbourne where you would never expect them.
How long does a City of Casey planning permit take for earthworks?
Budget six to eight weeks from lodgement for a straightforward application, and three to five months if it triggers public notice or a referral to Melbourne Water or a service authority. Application fees for earthworks-related permits typically land between $1,200 and $3,000 depending on the value of the works, and you will usually need a site plan with existing and proposed levels, a cross-section, and sometimes an arborist report. The clock does not start until the application is deemed complete, so an incomplete lodgement can quietly cost you a month before anyone tells you.
What is a legal point of discharge and do I need one in Casey?
It is council's written determination of exactly where your site stormwater is allowed to leave the property - a street kerb, an easement pit, or a Melbourne Water asset. You need it before any new or altered stormwater drainage, and your building surveyor will ask for it. City of Casey issues it on application, typically for a fee in the $150-$250 range with a turnaround of a couple of weeks. Digging a stormwater line to where you assume it should go, without that determination, is how people end up re-excavating a finished driveway.
When does AS 3798 apply to my earthworks?
AS 3798, the guideline for earthworks on commercial and residential developments, applies in full to commercial and subdivision work - warehouse pads, car parks, civil estate works - and it brings mandatory geotechnical supervision with testing of each fill lift at a specified frequency. On domestic sites it applies wherever the engineer or the building surveyor calls it up, which in practice is most controlled-fill house pads in Casey. The important part for a homeowner is the testing: fill placed under a slab needs to be verified to the specified density, and an untested pad can stall your slab inspection.
Do I need council approval to dig near a tree in Casey?
Possibly, and this is the most common thing people get caught by. If a tree is protected under a Vegetation Protection Overlay or is a significant tree on council's register, works inside its Tree Protection Zone need approval, and the TPZ under AS 4970 is calculated as twelve times the trunk diameter at breast height - so a 600mm trunk gives you a 7.2 metre radius. That is a big circle, and it routinely captures a driveway line or a footing that nobody expected to be a problem. Where we cannot avoid the zone we hand-dig or use non-destructive methods and work to an arborist's direction.
Not sure what your title is carrying?
Bring the address to the site visit and we will check the overlays, the discharge point and the depth before anyone quotes a start date.