With their strong reputation for providing quality education (at a cost that typically widens the scope of inclusion), Catholic schools continue to play an incredibly valuable role in Victoria’s education ecosystem. In July 2024, the Victorian Government announced that they would be allocating $243 million in funding for Catholic schools across the state. For long-standing UPco clients like Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic schools (MACS), this was welcome news – and together with faciliatory planning pathways, it signals great opportunities ahead.

But what is this looking like in practice? And how will it help those trying to get new schools off the ground? In this piece, UPco’s Peter Doyle and Adam Haines reflected on the work we have done (and are doing) with MACS, considering the challenges we’ve faced to date – and how the Clause 53.19 pathway may influence both our process and outcomes.

Let’s start with a bit of background. When it comes to education in Victoria, what’s the context we’re working within?

As Victoria’s population continues to grow, so does our need for quality education – particularly in growing areas of Melbourne. While the State Government is doing its best to meet this demand, it also relies heavily on the non-government school sector to provide diversity and choice in education. According to our client, MACS, demand for Catholic education is increasing across both primary and secondary schools – and UPco has worked to help meet this demand.

MACS has a great track record of delivering successful schools, many of which are in regional or lower socioeconomic growth areas. Sites are often acquired by the Catholic Church (through Melbourne Archdiocese) when plans for these growth areas are first developed, as they know that the need for schools will increase as the community grows.

Government funding is critical to Catholic schools, as they typically charge lower fees than their private school counterparts, so can’t generate the revenue to build new buildings and campuses. That said, even with access to funding, the process of gaining permits to actually build new schools has not been without its challenges. Fortunately, MACS has introduced a new policy to involve a planning consultant on all its developments to make the process easier – and UPco has been its consultant of choice on a number of projects.

What have been some obstacles you’ve faced when working with MACS on new school developments?

Most MACS projects are very large, staged developments on greenfield sites. This presents a few inherent challenges: one being the need for accompanying infrastructure to be built, such as roads and drainage. This is sometimes the responsibility of the council, and sometimes the developer – but in some cases, it’s not clear-cut and requires significant negotiation to determine.

The infrastructure a site requires can affect the development timeline, cost and deliverables in a few ways. For example, a site might need a temporary retarding basin so that stormwater flows at predevelopment levels – and this might mean that some facilities (such as a sports oval) can’t be delivered until the stormwater infrastructure is completed. In general, the infrastructure piece of the puzzle needs a project planner (like UPco) to act almost like a project manager – steering the ship, getting the right consultants engaged and accumulating various technical inputs to present to the responsible authority.

Environmental considerations can also be difficult to resolve. For instance, Marymede Catholic College, Doreen was a complex site, and preparing the planning application required a lot of background and consultant work in relation to things like vegetation, wildlife management and the site topography.

Zoning is typically less of an issue, given education facilities (schools) are a common land use profile within conventional residential settings, and with the majority of the new MACS schools located on greenfield sites, where often strategically these sites are allocated for school use under an area’s Precinct Structure Plan). However, we’ve also worked on expansions and refurbishments to independent Catholic schools on existing sites within established communities, with these projects presenting different and unique challenges.

What is the planning pathway? What’s changed?

Well, the previous approvals process was not entirely equitable, as the State had decreed that Government schools didn’t need planning permits (as long as they’re in public use zones), while all other schools had to go through the conventional planning process. The process itself was also quite convoluted, which meant delays in getting approval to build schools, and subsequent delays for people waiting to access those schools. The State realised that it needed to change things to speed up the process, create equity in the process and address the backlog of applications.

So, in May 2023, the Minister for Planning gazetted Amendment VC156, which introduced Clause 53.19 (Non-Government Schools) into the Victoria Planning Provisions. Essentially, this created a streamlined new planning pathway to support building new non-government schools and expanding and upgrading existing ones.

To be eligible for the pathway, the project has to propose a new school or be upgrading an existing school and be funded (in full or in part) by the Victorian Government Non-Government Schools Capital Fund.

There are a few changes that have been designed to speed up the process: for one, the Minister for Planning is the responsible authority, rather than the local council. Applications are also exempt from third party appeal of the Minister’s decision.

How has the new pathway been working so far?

When the new pathway was first trialled, there was some pushback from councils and communities who felt they were being left out of the process entirely. In response, the process was adjusted to give these third parties more input. While they still can’t appeal the Minister’s decision, they do now have the opportunity to submit their support or opposition of the development – and the Minister is required to consider these submissions.

At UPco, we actually prefer to engage with the council early on, so this change didn’t really alter our approach, and we carry out a pre-application with the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) to give them a sense of what’s happening. Having now worked through a few projects using the new pathway, we’re fortunate to have developed great relationships with the teams at DTP, who have confidence that when we’re running the applications, we’re doing things properly. That’s really benefited us and our clients.

We like the improved transparency of the new process and are finding it to be conceived and efficiently run. In our experience, the DTP is taking an objective approach and is helpful in facilitating projects in progressing.

What are some of the outcomes?

Amongst the projects we’re working on using the new process, several are making great progress, including MACS’s Marymede Catholic College, Doreen, which is currently being built in stages. Others have been approved and are ready to come out of the ground, like Kolbe Catholic College, Mickleham,  which will open its doors this year and St Thomas’ Primary School, Sale, which is set to relocate to its new site in 2027. We’ve also got a few other MACS projects on the go that range from delivering new school campuses to advising on masterplans  – and we look forward to sharing details as they evolve.

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