Planning a renovation, extension or new build in Footscray? Getting the building permit right at the start keeps the job moving. Cornerstone works with homeowners, builders, drafting firms and shopfitters across Footscray and the City of Maribyrnong: we issue the building permit, carry out the mandatory inspections and sign the job off, with one practice accountable for the file from start to finish.
Whether it’s a rear extension on a weatherboard, a second storey, a pair of townhouses, a garage down the side or a café fit-out on Barkly Street, you get a fixed fee quoted up front and a straight answer on what the Regulations actually require.
Local knowledge in Footscray
Footscray is a fast-changing inner-west suburb with a mix of Victorian workers’ cottages, Edwardian and interwar weatherboards, post-war brick homes and the apartment towers going up around the station and the Joseph Road precinct beside the Maribyrnong River. With the new Footscray Hospital now open on the corner of Ballarat and Geelong roads, the streets around it and the activity centre keep getting denser.
Older housing and heritage overlays. Many of the Victorian and Edwardian streets through Footscray, Seddon and Yarraville sit under a heritage overlay in the Maribyrnong Planning Scheme. Heritage is a planning matter: if the job needs a planning permit — a front-facing extension, demolition in a heritage precinct, a new dwelling — that has to be in hand before we can issue the building permit. We’ll tell you early if a planning application has to come first.
Small lots and boundaries. Footscray’s blocks are narrow, and most extensions, second storeys and townhouse pairs end up close to, or on, a side boundary. On a single house that brings in the Part 5 siting rules in the Building Regulations 2018 — setbacks, walls on boundaries, overshadowing and overlooking — and where the design misses a standard, council report and consent is needed before the permit can issue. For townhouse pairs the planning permit settles siting and the building permit has to match it. Either way, building on or near the boundary can mean a protection work notice to the neighbour. We check it all before we quote.
Ground conditions. The suburb sits on basalt with reactive clay over it, with old fill on former industrial and quarry land and softer river deposits near the Maribyrnong. Land close to the river also sits under a flooding overlay in the planning scheme, and the Building Regulations treat that as land liable to flooding, so a new home or enclosed extension there usually needs council’s report and consent on the floor level unless a planning permit already controls it; sheds, open decks and small additions are outside that step. We ask for a soil report and an engineer’s footing design on extensions, garages with a slab, and anything near the river.
Common jobs. Rear and upper-floor extensions, knock-down rebuilds, dual occupancies and townhouses, garages, carports and decks, and retaining walls where streets fall towards the river, and shop, café and office fit-outs through the activity centre. Fit-outs and change of use are NCC Volume One jobs; we do them for tenants, shopfitters and landlords.
Nearby
We work across Footscray and its neighbours — Yarraville, Seddon, West Footscray, Maidstone, Kingsville and Maribyrnong — and have pages for Werribee, Melton and the wider western suburbs. Beyond the west: Melbourne’s north, the eastern suburbs, the south-east and regional Victoria.