Development approvals in Queensland, and the Brisbane City Plan

Approvals8 min readReviewed 7 September 2026

Queensland does not use the language New South Wales or Victoria use, and the translation trips people up. There is no DA versus CDC choice and no separate planning permit. There is development, and the question is what level of assessment it attracts.

Material change of use

Under the Planning Act 2016, a material change of use is starting a new use of premises, or intensifying an existing one. Converting a retail tenancy or an office into a medical centre is squarely that, even where the work is entirely internal and nothing changes on the street.

Intensification matters as much as change. Adding consulting rooms to an existing practice can be a material change of use in its own right, because the scale of the use has moved, and that usually shows up first as a car parking question.

The four levels of assessment

Every proposal falls into one of four categories, and which one decides your timeline, your cost and whether the public gets a say.

The gap between the middle two and the last one is the one that matters commercially. Code assessable is a technical assessment against known criteria. Impact assessable invites submissions from anyone, and a submitter can appeal the decision, which adds months and a real risk of refusal.

How you find out which one applies

Three things in sequence, all inside the planning scheme for your local government area.

First, the use definition. The scheme defines uses, and your practice has to be matched to one. A general practice usually falls under a health care services style definition, but the boundaries matter: a practice with a procedure room, or one operating extended hours, can be read differently from a straightforward consulting practice.

Second, the zone. The tables of assessment set the level for that use in that zone. The same practice can be accepted in one zone, code assessable in another and impact assessable in a third, on streets a few hundred metres apart.

Third, any overlay. Overlays can lift the level of assessment regardless of what the zone says. Heritage, flood, traffic and character overlays all do it, and a site can carry more than one.

In Brisbane this is all inside the City Plan, which is searchable by address. It is worth looking your shortlist up before you fall in love with a tenancy, because this is the single most common reason a Brisbane site that suits the practice does not suit the approval.

Car parking, which decides more than it should

Parking is the recurring sticking point for medical uses in Queensland, as it is everywhere, but the schemes are explicit about rates and that makes it arithmetic rather than argument.

The scheme sets a required rate for the use. An existing tenancy that satisfied it as a shop frequently does not as a practice, because the rate for a health care use is higher and because practices generate visits that overlap. Where the shortfall cannot be met on site you are into a performance argument about demand, availability of public parking and time-of-day sharing, which is winnable and is also exactly the sort of thing a submitter objects to.

Then building approval, separately

Development approval deals with whether the use is acceptable. It says nothing about whether the building complies.

Building work needs a building approval under the Building Act 1975, issued by a private building certifier rather than the council, assessed against the National Construction Code. The certifier also carries out inspections and issues the certificate at completion. That final document, and what usually holds it up, is covered in the guide to occupancy certificates.

The two run in the right order for a reason. A certifier cannot approve building work that conflicts with a development approval, so where a development permit is required it has to be resolved first, and its conditions become things your documentation has to satisfy.