A planning scheme is Council's tool for managing growth and guiding development. It helps ensure Logan remains a highly desirable place to live and work. It is the “book of rules” that tells us how to manage growth and infrastructure, protect our green spaces, manage natural hazards, and create a prosperous and thriving community. The planning scheme must follow the Queensland Government’s rules and guidelines and consider State interests, plans and policies, such as South East Queensland Regional Plan.

To learn more please:

• Check out this Queensland Government fact sheet
• View our video

The planning scheme guides what you can build on your property, or a property you’re looking to buy. It also affects what others around you can do, and what happens in your neighbourhood. It guides the ‘bigger picture’ and impacts the delivery of roads, jobs and other services.

In Logan Plan 2025 we will improve how we protect the places we love, create attractive and well-designed places to live, work and play, and enable our community to move around the city safely.

The planning scheme will regulate new development but will not impact upon existing lawful development or development approvals. When we are able to share the draft Logan Plan 2025 with our community in 2024, after the Queensland Government have completed their review, you can see more information about changes that may impact future development on your property.

Creating a new planning scheme to guide Logan’s growth is a huge task, with lots of different interests to be balanced. We need to work together to ensure our new planning scheme guides the best outcomes for our city and our future. From around mid-2024, after the Queensland Government have completed their review, we will share our draft Logan Plan 2025 with you, our community. Everyone will be able to look at the plan and give us feedback about what you like and what you think should be changed in the way we guide future growth. We want you to contribute to a shared vision and a sustainable future for the City of Logan. Contact our team by phoning 07 3412 3412 or emailing LoganPlan2025@logan.qld.gov.au.

Logan Plan 2025 will keep what's working well from our current planning scheme and improve the parts that could be working better. It will focus on:

• managing growth in both the established and newer areas of our city
• the design of our buildings, streets and landscapes, taking into account factors like sustainability and safety
• continuing to provide diverse employment opportunities
• improving how we manage and respond to natural hazards like flooding
• protecting and enhancing our environmental values, like our green spaces, waterways and wildlife for our community and future generations.

By planning well, we can protect the places we love and maintain the lifestyle we enjoy. Key focuses of the planning scheme include:

• Encouraging development that works with the local climate and landscape, and the unique challenges presented by climate change
• Creating communities that cater for the needs of our diverse and changing population
• Creating great streets and public spaces for us to enjoy
• Ensuring health, education, recreation, and social services are in the right places to support the needs of the community
• Protecting our cultural heritage, including that of our First Nations peoples

Our planning scheme needs to support a range of housing options to meet different needs at different stages of life. Housing needs to be located in the right place with access to the right services. This is an important and challenging part of managing growth in our city. Different housing choices help our community access affordable places to live and meet other costs such as food, clothing, transport, health care and education. As a new housing choice, Logan Plan 2025 will support terrace housing in key areas. These offer affordable independent living without the overheads of body corporate fees.

A focus area of the new scheme is the economy and local job opportunities. The scheme helps by ensuring there is enough employment land in the city, where new businesses and industries can be established and existing ones can expand. As our residential areas expand, it's important that our employment areas keep up.

Our planning scheme helps us balance what goes where, as well as guiding the infrastructure, such as roads and transport, to help people access jobs and services. There are also policies about managing pollution, parking, traffic and a range of other factors to make sure we can all live and work in our city together.

The new planning scheme will ensure development is managed to appropriately consider natural hazards, including the increased risks caused by the projected effects of climate change and more extreme weather events. We require development to be located and designed to protect people and property and avoid increasing our exposure to risk.

We use industry best practice modelling to help us identify flood likelihood and impact in different areas of our city. From that we determine different levels of risk and apply rules about what can and cannot be done, and the measures that may need to be put in place to improve our resilience. For example:

• You might create a new sports field in a flooded area, but not develop a new childcare centre there.
• A new house may be ok in areas of low flood risk as long as the floor levels are high enough and people can be safely evacuated.

Logan has more than 1,100 environmental and recreational parks that need to be preserved and enhanced for our future. Our planning scheme reflects Queensland Government requirements relating to vegetation, waterways and koala protection. It includes rules that protect key areas of environmental significance by preventing development.

It also includes rules that need to be met to ensure we minimise the impact of development on aspects such as vegetation, the habitat and safe movement of wildlife, the areas we have available to enjoy for recreation, areas of historical or cultural significance, the quality of our waterways and wetlands, and how we manage stormwater, pollution and flood protection.

Council provides services like water, sewerage, roads and parks when and where they are needed.

To understand the future infrastructure needs of our community we forecast future housing and employment growth and compare it with actual development. This modelling work helps us prepare a Local Government Infrastructure Plan, which is part of our planning scheme.

It outlines our planning assumptions, the standards of service we aim to provide, and our plan for delivery of key infrastructure (what, when and where). It needs to be affordable and sustainable and provide the right connections to help people live, work and move about safely in our city.

Growth is guided by policies and plans at both the State and local levels. South East Queensland Regional Plan sets targets and areas for growth. This indicates that roughly a quarter of the expected population growth will happen in established areas of our city, with the remainder being in emerging areas such as Jimboomba, Park Ridge and Bahrs Scrub.

While the State Government policies direct where growth will occur, Council’s planning scheme guides the way we manage that development and provide infrastructure (like water, parks, roads) to service it.

Queensland Government legislation (the Planning Act 2016) requires local governments to review their planning schemes every 10 years to ensure they continue to respond to growth and changes at local, regional and state levels.

Our current scheme was adopted in 2015 and brought together the different policies of the former local government areas of Logan, Gold Coast and Beaudesert, which merged to form the new City of Logan in 2008.

Since Council adopted the current scheme, new State policies and plans have come into effect, and different challenges and community expectations are emerging. Over the next 15 years Logan will be one of the fastest growing areas in South East Queensland, with our current population of just over 340,000 predicted to exceed 500,000 by 2036.

The planning scheme provides direction for this growth and the infrastructure needed to service it, while also protecting Logan’s unique values. In 2020-2021 Council undertook a major review of our planning scheme, and decided in July 2021 to prepare a new planning scheme to shape Logan’s future growth.

This review doesn’t mean we start from scratch. Council will update every part of the scheme to make sure it is contemporary and relevant, and reflects community needs and values.

Like the current planning scheme, the new planning scheme will apply to all land within the City of Logan, except the Yarrabilba and Greater Flagstone Priority Development Areas (PDA). Development in Priority Development Areas is regulated by the Queensland Government, with separate development schemes in place.

To learn more about PDAs, please visit the EDQ website.

The new planning scheme is being prepared by Council in accordance with Queensland Government legislation, specifically the Planning Act 2016.

The planning scheme will take into account the State Planning Policy (2017) and South East Queensland Regional Plan. It will be reviewed by the Queensland Government before it is made available for public review and comment.

Relevant Council policies such as the Corporate Plan 2021-2026 will also be integrated into the new scheme, along with the findings of specialist technical studies and reviews completed by industry experts.

Developing a new planning scheme is a lengthy and complex program of work. It’s important that we take lots of different interests into account and work together to achieve the best possible outcome for the City of Logan.

The Planning Act 2016 establishes the legal framework for planning in Queensland. Under this Act, the State Government prepares State Policies and plans including the State Planning Policy (2017) and South East Queensland Regional Plan.

The Planning Act 2016 also requires local governments to prepare a planning scheme to guide growth in their areas. The local planning scheme must integrate with State policies, plans and interests as these set the State’s direction for new growth areas, including expansion of the urban development footprint.

Queensland Government’s South East Queensland Regional Plan provides a coordinated planning framework that aims to accommodate growth sustainably, with a focus on housing choice and affordability, jobs and our economy, transport/movement, liveability and the protection of regional values like biodiversity.