Queensland Rezoned Your Site? The Superseded Planning Scheme Clock Is Running

Queensland Scheme Changes: One year to ask for the old scheme. Then it is gone

A Queensland site comes up with a price that only makes sense on the old density controls. The agent says the council “will look at it”. You check the planning scheme and find it was replaced fourteen months ago. That sentence either opens the deal or closes it, and it turns on a date, not on optimism.

When a local government replaces its planning scheme, the previous scheme becomes a superseded planning scheme. The Planning Act 2016 gives you a narrow, time-limited right to ask for the old scheme to be applied to your development. A student who learns this check early stops buying rezonings as though they were still approvals.

The deal question

Should I buy a site whose value depends on planning controls that no longer apply? Before answering that, you need one uncomfortable number: how much of the one-year request window is left.

The checks a student would run

• The current scheme date. Pull the commencement date of the planning scheme in force and the date the previous scheme became superseded. The one-year period in section 29 runs from the scheme and related policies becoming superseded.
• The superseded controls. Reconstruct what the old scheme actually permitted on this lot: zoning, minimum lot size, height, density, use rights. Old density is only valuable if you can articulate it precisely.
• What changed. Identify whether the change is a simple tightening or an adverse planning change, because that determines whether compensation is even in play.
• The request pathway. Confirm whether a request under section 29 would ask the local government to assess a development application under the old scheme, or to apply the old scheme to something that used to be accepted development.
• The compensation test. If the change is adverse, check the section 31 triggers and the limits against them before assuming a claim exists.
• The decision timeline. Build the scenario where the request is refused, because that is the branch that produces a refusal, a court appeal and a claim question.

The order and reasoning behind the checks

The order matters because the cheap checks eliminate the expensive ones. Scheme dates cost nothing and can end the deal. Reconstructing old controls costs a planner's hour and tells you what you are actually asking for. Only then is it worth paying for a planning strategy, and only after that should you consider a compensation claim, which is the slowest and most uncertain part of the chain.

The trap or expensive mistake

Two traps catch buyers. The first is buying the old density. If the window has closed, the previous controls are history; the site must be priced on the current scheme, and any contract conditional on “council approval of the old density” is conditional on something that cannot lawfully be granted.

The second trap is assuming that if the request is refused and your application is later refused, the compensation clock runs from the end of your appeal. It does not. In Roseingrave v Brisbane City Council [2024] QPEC 7, summarised by Colin Biggers & Paisley, the court found the six-month limit in section 31(6) ran from the decision notice on the development application, not from the later dismissal of the appeal, and declined to extend time. The Planning Institute of Australia's March 2026 practitioner update makes the same point: a claim tied to a section 31(3) or (4) decision must be made within six months after notice of that decision, while a public purpose change claim has two years.

What the rule actually means

Section 29 gives you a right to ask, not a right to receive. The local government must decide whether to agree to the request within the period prescribed by regulation and give a decision notice within five business days of deciding. If it gives no notice within five business days after that period ends, it is taken to have agreed. Where the request is agreed for development that used to be accepted development, the development may be carried out under the superseded scheme; where it is agreed for a development application, the application is assessed under the old scheme instead of the current scheme and its planning scheme policies. If the request is refused, section 31 opens a compensation pathway only in the defined circumstances, and the Planning and Environment Court Act 2016 governs how the court treats the superseded scheme on appeal.

What the result means for feasibility and the offer

Run three numbers. First, yield on the current controls. Second, yield on the superseded controls if the request is agreed. Third, the probability-weighted version, where you allow for a refusal and a delay of a year or more while the request and any appeal resolve.

On a simple example — a suburban lot where the old minimum lot size permitted three dwellings and the current scheme permits two — the difference is one dwelling, say a mid-range product in that market. If the request window is open, the extra yield can justify a higher offer, but the offer should still be conditional on the request being agreed and should carry a price for the delay. If the window has closed, the deal is a two-dwelling deal. Trying to buy a two-dwelling site at a three-dwelling price is the emotional trap: the buyer is paying for a plan the law no longer permits, because the price feels like a bargain against the old numbers.

The Think Property Club lesson

Density is a perishable asset. The disciplined student dates the evidence: which scheme, in force when, superseded when, request window open until when. That habit turns a vague “council will look at it” into a go/no-go decision with a date attached, and it is the same evidence discipline that makes a feasibility defensible to a lender.

Practical checklist and next steps

• Confirm the current scheme's commencement date and the date the previous scheme became superseded.
• Reconstruct the superseded controls and write them down as a single-page yield comparison against today's controls.
• Calculate the remaining time in the one-year window before you sign anything.
• Get written advice on whether a section 29 request would be agreed and what a refusal would mean for the deal.
• If the change is adverse, diarise the section 31 limits — two years for a public purpose change, six months from the decision notice for the other triggers — and never let an appeal be treated as a pause.

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