Carport & Patio Council Approval in Brisbane City Council

Brisbane City Council is the largest council in Australia by population, and the one most Sunstate jobs are lodged with. Its planning scheme is Brisbane City Plan 2014.

What decides it

Three things, in this order:

• Mean height of the structure. Not the ridge, not the gutter — the mean. It is why a flyover patio gets looked at more closely than a skillion, and why a gable carport more often needs approval than a flat one.
• How close it sits to your boundary. You can build to within 500mm of a boundary with your neighbour’s written agreement.
• What sits over your property in the planning scheme. Character and flood overlays are the two that come up most often in Brisbane, and they attach to the land rather than to what you are building.

Floor area alone does not decide it, which is the assumption behind most of the wrong answers on the internet.

How long it takes

2–6 weeks in the ordinary case. If the job needs a relaxation — a concession on setback or height — allow up to another four.

What we do

We prepare the drawings, lodge the application, and deal with the council. If something needs negotiating, we negotiate it. You are not chasing a reference number, and you are not the one explaining a setback to a planner.

At completion a certifier inspects the structure and signs it off. That signature is what makes it a legal structure rather than one you have to disclose and discount when you sell.

The honest limit of a web page

We cannot tell you whether your carport needs approval without your address, because the overlays are property-specific. Anyone who gives you a definitive answer without it is guessing.

Send us the address and we will tell you where you stand before you spend anything.