title: Rural Conservation Zone Schedule 2 and Amendment C131macr council: macedon-ranges state: vic category: amendment classification: MINOR status: approved last_compiled: 2026-05-31 source_docs:
- 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf
- 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf
Rural Conservation Zone Schedule 2 and Amendment C131macr
Rural Conservation Zone Schedule 2 is the local rural-conservation control that ties land-use decisions to the Macedon-Cobaw biolink, rural landscape character, and sustainable agricultural practice (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031). The available documents show Amendment C131macr as an operative planning-scheme amendment rather than a live exhibition matter, because the RCZ2 schedule is printed in the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme with the amendment code C131macr and an operative date of 10 September 2021 (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031).
The practical effect of RCZ2 is not to stop all use or development; it creates a decision framework where agriculture, buildings, earthworks, vegetation removal, wastewater, bushfire, and landscape effects must be tested against conservation values and site capability (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1031-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1102). In simple terms, RCZ2 works like a gate with several locks: a proposal can pass through only if it shows how the land can be used without weakening the environmental corridor, rural character, water quality, and hazard controls that apply to the site (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
Background
The RCZ2 schedule identifies three conservation values: contributing to remnant native vegetation to create a biolink between the Macedon and Cobaw Ranges, protecting area character and landscape, and achieving sustainable agricultural practice (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031). Those values matter because they turn individual permit decisions into corridor-scale decisions: a poultry use, a subdivision, or a freeway service centre is not assessed only as an isolated site proposal, but as something that may affect a wider rural landscape and ecological link (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1094-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
The available source base shows RCZ2 being applied to multiple different planning questions. At 101 Jim Road, Newham, a 44.42 hectare RCZ2 property was assessed for a low-density mobile outdoor poultry farm of up to 1,000 birds, with the egg-production area occupying 13.5 hectares and located more than 200 metres from the nearest residential zone boundary, more than 320 metres from the nearest dwelling, more than 30 metres from a dam or waterway, and 437 metres from Jim Road (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1027). At Romsey Road, Woodend, an 11.83 hectare eastern site in RCZ2 was assessed for a freeway service centre including fuel sales, 20 electric-vehicle charging facilities, three convenience restaurants, 160 standard car spaces, five caravan spaces, 20 truck parking spaces, coach parking, new Calder Freeway ramps, a retarding basin, and an effluent-disposal envelope (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1094-1100). At Romsey Road, Woodend, biodiversity material also records an eastern parcel in RCZ2, Environmental Significance Overlay Schedule 4, and Vegetation Protection Overlay Schedule 8, illustrating how RCZ2 commonly works with overlays rather than by itself (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
Amendment C131macr appears to have broader planning-scheme reach than RCZ2 alone. The February 2026 source lists “C131macr Schedule 4 to the Special Use Zone: Private Hospital” in a Planning Panels Victoria document list for Amendment C147macr, and it also reproduces a Schedule to Clause 52.02 carrying the C131macr code and 10 September 2021 date (Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.46-47; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.87). This page therefore treats C131macr as the amendment source for the operative RCZ2 schedule, while recognising that the amendment also appears in other local planning provisions outside this RCZ2 topic (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.87).
Analysis
Statutory Mechanism
RCZ2 is a conservation-led rural zone schedule, so its core mechanism is to make conservation values part of the permit test for land use, buildings, works, subdivision, and earthworks (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1031-1032). The schedule does this by naming the local values to be conserved, while Clause 35.06 supplies the operative permit triggers and decision guidelines that the responsible authority must consider when deciding whether a proposed use or development is acceptable (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1031-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1102).
The clearest effect is that proposals must demonstrate land capability, environmental compatibility, and fit with rural landscape character before they can be supported (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1031-1032). The Newham poultry proposal shows this mechanism in a low-intensity agricultural form: the applicant framed the use as mobile, pasture-based, involving no new permanent infrastructure, no earthworks, no vegetation removal, no on-site sales or signage, and no additional vehicle traffic beyond existing farm operations (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1026). Those details are not incidental; they are the facts that allow a responsible authority to test whether an agricultural use remains consistent with the schedule value of sustainable agricultural practice and the broader RCZ purpose of conserving landscape and environmental values (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1032).
The Romsey Road service-centre material shows the same zone working under a more intensive proposal. A freeway service centre is not treated as ordinary rural activity; the planning report identifies permit triggers for use, buildings and works, earthworks affecting cross-boundary water flow, buildings within 100 metres of a Transport Zone 2 road or waterway, illuminated signage, native vegetation removal, and new access to a Transport Zone 2 road (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1099-1102). The mechanism is therefore cumulative: RCZ2 sets the conservation frame, while overlays and particular provisions add water, vegetation, signage, access, and transport tests (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1104; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
Land Use, Lot Size, and Rural Settlement Effect
The available documents show RCZ2 operating as a low-fragmentation rural control. The Onsite Wastewater Management Plan table lists RCZ1, RCZ2, and RCZ3 with a 40 hectare minimum lot size, while RCZ4 is listed with a 50 hectare minimum lot size (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785). That number is important because it limits the ability to subdivide RCZ2 land into rural-residential lots and supports the broader planning position that growth is not recommended for non-urban areas because of environmental constraints and the potential compromise of agricultural land (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785).
The 44.42 hectare Newham property sits just above the RCZ2 minimum lot size listed in the wastewater plan, which helps explain why the planning issue is not urban expansion but management of agricultural use within an existing rural holding (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1027; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785). The poultry proposal allocates 13.5 hectares to egg production, 20 head of cattle to a separate grazing area, up to four horses to a house paddock, and about 6 hectares to a conservation zone, showing how RCZ2 sites can carry multiple rural functions while still needing internal spatial separation between production, conservation, dwellings, waterways, and amenity interfaces (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1026-1027).
For subdivision, RCZ2 interacts with hazard controls rather than operating as a simple area standard. The Mount St Marys Lane bushfire material records a nine-lot subdivision in RCZ2 where Approved Measure 5.2 applied, building envelopes were used to manage future dwelling siting, Lots 8 and 9 required BAL-29 construction with 16 metres of defendable space, and a 10,000 litre static water supply was identified for Lot 9 (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.284-292). That example shows that even where a subdivision pathway is being considered, RCZ2 land remains constrained by bushfire design, access, water supply, vegetation management, and building-envelope logic (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.284-292).
Environmental and Infrastructure Dependencies
RCZ2’s environmental effect is strongest where it overlaps with ESO4 and VPO8. The biodiversity assessment for Romsey Road states that the eastern parcel is in RCZ2, ESO4, and VPO8, and then links those controls to Lake Eppalock catchment water-quality protection, the Cobaw Biolink, remnant native vegetation, and permit requirements for native vegetation removal (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416). This means that a development in RCZ2 may need to resolve three linked questions at once: whether the use fits a conservation rural zone, whether water quality in the Eppalock catchment is protected, and whether native vegetation loss is avoided, minimised, or offset (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
Water and wastewater are recurring practical constraints. The Romsey Road service-centre proposal includes a retarding basin near the eastern boundary and an effluent-disposal envelope near the north-west of the site, which shows that stormwater and wastewater are embedded in the site layout rather than being later technical details (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1099-1101). The Onsite Wastewater Management Plan states that all onsite wastewater proposals must be submitted with a Permit to Install application, that land capability assessment requirements vary by risk, and that reticulated sewer servicing considerations are to be embedded into broader land-use planning and development assessment (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1785). The consequence is that RCZ2 land without reticulated sewer has a hard servicing test: a planning proposal may be acceptable in land-use terms but still constrained if wastewater, effluent disposal, waterway protection, or catchment risk cannot be demonstrated (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1785).
Transport infrastructure can also change the character of the RCZ2 assessment. At Romsey Road, the proposed service centre relies on new on- and off-ramps to the Calder Freeway, access to a Transport Zone 2 road, 160 car spaces, 20 truck spaces, and dedicated facilities for caravans and coaches (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1099-1101). That scale means the planning question is no longer only whether a rural use is compatible with a rural landscape; it is whether a highway-oriented use can be reconciled with conservation-zone purposes, waterway setbacks, native vegetation controls, signage controls, and state-road access requirements (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1099-1103).
Planning Implications
The main planning implication is that RCZ2 functions as a restraint on settlement spread and land fragmentation while still allowing carefully justified rural and infrastructure-related uses. The 40 hectare minimum lot size for RCZ1, RCZ2, and RCZ3 supports retention of larger rural holdings, and the same wastewater plan states that growth is anticipated through consolidated growth around existing developed areas and infill rather than non-urban expansion (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785). This makes RCZ2 part of the Shire’s broader settlement-management system, not merely an environmental overlay by another name (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1031-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785).
The second implication is that RCZ2 decisions are evidence-heavy. The source examples use bushfire management statements, biodiversity assessments, traffic engineering, land capability material, site layout plans, vegetation analysis, effluent-disposal areas, and stormwater infrastructure to justify or test proposals (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.284-292; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1094-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416). The mechanism is similar to checking whether a heavy table can stand on all its legs: if land use, water, vegetation, bushfire, access, and landscape do not all hold, the proposal becomes vulnerable even if one part looks acceptable (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1104; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
The third implication is that C131macr should not be read as a current unresolved amendment based on the available documents. The RCZ2 schedule is printed with C131macr and a 10 September 2021 date, and the February 2026 pack reproduces another local schedule with the same amendment code and operative date (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.87). The unresolved work now sits at the permit-assessment level for individual RCZ2 proposals, not at the amendment-lifecycle level for C131macr itself, on the evidence available in the supplied source documents (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1094-1102).
Current Status
The available documents indicate that Amendment C131macr is operative in the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme, because the RCZ2 schedule and the Clause 52.02 schedule are each printed with C131macr and the date 10 September 2021 (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.87). The active planning work shown in the source base is application-level assessment on land affected by RCZ2, including rural agricultural use at Newham, a freeway service centre at Woodend, biodiversity and vegetation implications at Romsey Road, and bushfire-responsive subdivision assessment at Mount St Marys Lane (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1025-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1094-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.284-292).
Dependencies
- Blocks: RCZ2 constrains subdivision, buildings, works, vegetation removal, earthworks, and non-agricultural rural uses where they cannot demonstrate consistency with biolink, landscape, sustainable agriculture, water, vegetation, and hazard controls (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1031-1032; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1102).
- Blocked by: Individual proposals can be blocked or materially reshaped by wastewater capability, catchment protection, native vegetation requirements, bushfire design, Transport Zone 2 access, and waterway or road setbacks (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785).
- Informed by: The available examples rely on site plans, planning reports, biodiversity assessment, traffic engineering, bushfire management, land capability, and wastewater planning material (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.284-292; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1094-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1784-1785).
- Implements: RCZ2 implements local conservation values for the Macedon-Cobaw biolink, rural landscape character, and sustainable agricultural practice through the Rural Conservation Zone schedule (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031).
- Conflicts with: The available documents do not identify a direct policy conflict, but they show recurring tension between rural conservation objectives and more intensive proposals such as freeway-service infrastructure, illuminated signage, native vegetation removal, and new highway access (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1099-1102).
Cross-Jurisdictional Links
The strongest cross-agency link is transport. The Romsey Road service-centre proposal depends on access to Calder Freeway, which is identified as a State Freeway, and it requires creation of access to land in Transport Zone 2 (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1425-1427). The water-quality link is also wider than a single property because ESO4 relates to the Eppalock Water Supply Catchment and Lake Eppalock is described as a major water storage for irrigation, stock and domestic, and urban water supplies within the municipality (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1414-1415). These links mean RCZ2 permit decisions can require coordination with state transport interests, catchment protection expectations, and biodiversity controls beyond the immediate landowner (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1101-1102; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1413-1416).
Gaps in This Analysis
The source set is thin for reconstructing Amendment C131macr itself. The documents provide operative schedule extracts and application-level examples, but they do not provide the C131macr explanatory report, instruction sheet, full amendment maps, council adoption report, approval notice, gazettal notice, panel material, or a complete before-and-after comparison of the planning scheme provisions (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.87). Because those primary amendment documents are missing, this page can explain the current mechanism and observed permit effects of RCZ2, but it cannot fully explain why C131macr selected these schedule values, what land was newly affected, whether any submissions were made, or whether the amendment changed the extent of RCZ2 mapping (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.46-47).
This gap should be treated as an amendment-source gap rather than a complete absence of statutory evidence. The operative schedule text is available, but the amendment history and mapping rationale are not available in the supplied corpus (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1031; Source: 25-february-2026-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.87).