Codes and overlays

What is a code?

The codes are for safety issues, environmental protection, heritage, infrastructure and amenity. Codes identify areas or issues that cross boundaries of properties or zones. They apply in addition to zone requirements.

Some codes are mapped in an overlay. The planning controls applied to them are in the text of the code in the SPPs. Not all codes are mapped using an overlay, for example, the signs code does not use an overlay.

Codes provide rules for issues or values that go beyond property or zone boundaries. For example, in many zones, a code may consider land at risk to natural hazards like coastal inundation or landslide.

While codes are not intended to change the purpose of zones, a code may alter or limit use and development. For example, a code may limit where a house can be built on a lot to avoid flooding or a land slip. The aim is for codes and zones to produce a suite of standards that work together to provide sustainable outcomes.

How codes operate together with zones is explained in clause 5.5 of the SPPs. Affected land is shown either on an overlay map, or on a list of places within LPSs.

Where there is a conflict between a rule in a code and a rule in a zone, the code overrides.

TPS codes

The list below gives a brief description of the codes.

• Signs
  • Rules for advertising and the display of information on signs
  • Protects visual amenity
  • Requirements to protect pedestrian and vehicle safety
• Parking and Sustainable Transport
  • Requirements for car parking, access and commercial vehicle facilities
  • Requirements for bicycle parking and facilities
  • Pedestrian access and safety throughout parking areas
• Road and Rail Assets
  • Protects the function of roads based on a strategic road hierarchy
  • Incorporates best practice engineering standards and traffic impact assessments
  • Protects existing and future road and rail corridors
  • Ensures long term corridor viability
• Electricity Transmission Infrastructure Protection
  • Protects major electricity transmission infrastructure assets, future assets and corridors
  • Ensures nearby use and development does not adversely affect its safe and reliable operation
• Telecommunications
  • Includes high impact and low impact telecommunications facilities
  • Exemptions for some minor telecommunications facilities like public pay phones and small satellite dishes
• Local Historic Heritage
  • Applies to development only
  • Uses code lists as well as mapped overlays
  • Protects the significance of local heritage places, precincts and landscapes, and places or precincts of archaeological potential
  • Regulates development to minimise impact on significant trees
• Natural Assets
  • Minimises impacts on the natural values of watercourses, wetlands and lakes, coastal areas, identified priority vegetation and threatened fauna species
  • Promotes sustainable development of natural and physical resources while maintaining ecological processes and genetic diversity
• Scenic Protection
  • Protects Tasmania’s important scenic landscape values
  • Can only be applied to compatible zones such as non-urban areas, rural zones or landscape
• Attenuation
  • Limits land use conflict between uses from noise, odour, vibration, gases, dust or waste, especially sensitive uses
  • Prevents sensitive uses from locating too close to potentially incompatible operations
• Coastal Erosion Hazard
  • Reduces risks to people and property
  • Ensures use and development does not contribute to further risks
  • Minimises costs from any required adaptation or protection response
• Coastal Inundation Hazards
  • Reduces the risk of coastal flooding
• Flood-Prone Areas
  • Reduces the risk of flooding
• Bushfire Prone
  • Reduces risks to human life and property and minimises costs to the community arising from bushfire hazards
  • Assessment standards for hazardous and vulnerable uses and new subdivisions
• Potentially Contaminated Land
  • Limits the impact from contaminated land on human health and the environment
• Landslip
  • Reduces the risk from development on unstable land
• Safeguarding of Airports
  • Promotes the safety of air traffic

The list below gives the overlay names for mapped codes.

• Parking and Sustainable Transport Code
  • Parking and sustainable transport
  • Parking precinct plan
  • Pedestrian priority street
• Road and Railway Assets Code
  • Road and railway attenuation area
  • Future major road
  • Future major railway
• Electricity Transmission Infrastructure Protection Code
  • Electricity transmission infrastructure protection
  • Communication station buffer area
  • Electricity transmission corridor
  • Inner protection area
  • Substation facility
  • Substation facility buffer
• Local Historic Heritage Code
  • Local historic landscape precinct
  • Local heritage place
  • Place or precinct of archaeological potential
  • Significant trees
  • Local heritage precinct
• Natural Assets Code
  • Priority vegetation area
• Future coastal refugia area
  • Waterway and coastal protection area
• Scenic Protection Code
  • Scenic road corridor
  • Scenic protection area
• Attenuation Code
  • Attenuation area
• Coastal Erosion Hazard Code
  • Coastal erosion investigation area
  • Coastal erosion hazard bands
• Coastal Inundation Hazard Code
  • Coastal inundation investigation area
  • Coastal inundation hazard bands
• Flood-prone Areas Hazard Code
  • Flood-prone areas
• Bushfire-prone Areas Code
  • Bushfire-prone areas
• Potentially Contaminated Land Code
  • Potentially contaminated land
• Landslip Hazard Code
  • Landslip hazard bands
• Safeguarding of Airports Code
  • Airport obstacle limitation area
  • Airport noise exposure area

Other overlays

Other overlays are applied through LPSs for

• local area objectives
• specific area plans
• site-specific qualifications
• precincts and defined areas