What does a $2M heritage renovation in Melbourne keep and change?

Answering: What does a $2M heritage renovation in Melbourne keep and change?

Estimated reading time: 13 min read

A $2 million heritage renovation in Melbourne keeps what the property’s heritage citation says is significant, often the street face and the roofline, and it changes what the Heritage Overlay leaves open or will permit: the plan behind the facade, the light, the services and a well-placed rear addition. Under Clause 43.01 of the planning scheme, demolition, external alterations and new buildings need a council permit, while the interior is controlled only where the overlay’s schedule switches on internal alteration controls. With a practice record of 59-plus heritage approvals at a 98 per cent success rate (a record, never a promise), BY Projects Architecture draws that keep-and-change line before anyone falls in love with a design.

You are at the kitchen table with the budget agreed and the house you already love all around you. The overlay map is open on the laptop, and every conversation so far has been about what council will refuse. The fear underneath is quieter than a refusal: that the heritage controls will strip the life out of your brief one concession at a time, and that you will only notice once the invoices have started.

Two million dollars buys a great deal of house, but not one extra square metre of permission. The decision guidelines in Clause 43.01 weigh the significance of the place and the effect of the work on it, and the size of your budget is not on that list. What the money does buy is room to change a great deal inside the envelope, carefully, once the keep list is settled. If you are still choosing who to hire, start with our guide to the best heritage architects in Melbourne, and for the numbers, see our 2026 heritage renovation cost ranges. This article is the ledger that sits between them.

Key Insights

• The keep list comes from the citation: its statement of significance names what is important about the place, why it matters and how.
• Clause 43.01 puts demolition, external alterations and new buildings behind a council permit, and reaches the interior only where the schedule switches on internal alteration controls.
• A house on the Victorian Heritage Register is a different regime: Heritage Victoria generally requires a permit for interior works as well as extensions and demolition.
• Harvey Street in Malvern, a smaller heritage-overlay job of ours, shows the change side in built form: load-bearing partitions out, a run of arched openings in, larger openings and upgraded glazing, all behind an understated street face.
• BY Projects Architecture runs a heritage brief at this level in a set order: a one-hour Feasibility Session (in person or on Zoom), a staged fixed fee, then staged design work that clarifies what the budget achieves beside the full wish list.

The ledger at a glance, for a house in a local Heritage Overlay:

Table of Contents

• The citation writes the keep list, so start there
• Inside the house, the schedule decides how far the overlay reaches
• Harvey Street in Malvern shows the moves at a smaller scale
• Some questions only your site can answer
• This is how we run a $2 million heritage brief

The citation writes the keep list, so start there

Every place in a Heritage Overlay is listed in the schedule to Clause 43.01 of the council’s planning scheme, and most were identified through a heritage study. That study usually gives each place a citation: a history, a description, an assessment of its heritage values, its condition and integrity, and a statement of significance. The statement of significance is the document that matters most to your budget, because it names what is important about the place, why it is important and how.

Read it before you read anything else. It tells you whether the value sits in the street facade, the roofline, the verandah, the front rooms or the way a whole precinct reads from the footpath, and it is what council will hold your drawings against. Clause 43.01’s decision guidelines point straight at it: the significance of the place, any statement of significance, the heritage study and any conservation policy, and whether a new building’s location, bulk, form or appearance will harm that significance.

Keeping is also the simplest path through the overlay. Under Clause 43.01, repairs and routine maintenance need a permit only when they change the appearance of the place or are not done to the same details, specifications and materials. Like-for-like repair of the fabric the citation values sits outside that trigger, so much of the keep side of the ledger can proceed without waiting on council.

One currency note for anyone reading older advice: the Victorian Local Heritage Guidelines have replaced Planning Practice Note 1, and places already listed in the schedule are not affected by the change. Your citation is still the document to get first.

Inside the house, the schedule decides how far the overlay reaches

Clause 43.01 controls internal alterations only where the schedule to the overlay specifies internal alteration controls for that place, so check your entry before you decide what the budget can do inside. Where that control is off, the plan behind the street face is a planning question council does not ask, and that is where a serious budget does its best work: the walls, the flow between rooms, the joinery, the services and how daylight travels through the plan.

Two cautions keep that freedom honest. First, structure is its own approval. Taking out a load-bearing wall is engineering work: a structural engineer designs it, and a building permit, which is separate from any planning permit, generally applies. Bring the engineer in while the design is still on paper, so the opening you fall for is one that can stand up.

Second, a house on the Victorian Heritage Register sits under the Heritage Act 2017. Clause 43.01 then drops its own permit for developing the place (it keeps one only for subdivision), and Heritage Victoria generally requires a heritage permit for interior works as well as extensions and demolition. On a state-listed house, the interior is part of the heritage conversation from day one.

In our experience, a constraint read properly pushes the design somewhere better rather than somewhere smaller, and a built example shows it more clearly than any rule.

Harvey Street in Malvern shows the moves at a smaller scale

Our Harvey Street project in Malvern, an Edwardian house in a Heritage Overlay completed in 2025, is a smaller job than the budgets this article is written for, and we use it for one reason: its moves are the keep-and-change ledger in built form.

The house started with a traditional, deeply compartmentalised plan. Fragmented rooms held the daylight in separate pockets and left dark, underused zones in between, and the brief was to open that up while keeping the structural character and the warmth of the original home.

That character and the traditional architectural scale were the keep side of the ledger, and the house meets its street with an understated facade of balanced masonry. What changed:

• Load-bearing partitions were selectively removed to form one kitchen, dining and living core.
• A repeated sequence of custom-engineered arched openings now sets the rhythm of movement through the house and frames views, pulling daylight deep into the plan.
• Structural openings were enlarged and the glazing upgraded to bring more light in.
• A broad kitchen island and an integrated walk-in pantry, framed by an arch, anchor the open plan, finished in warm timber flooring and natural stone.

The arches are the lesson. An opened-up plan needs definition as well as light, and the arches supply it: they keep a sense of separate rooms while daylight and movement run straight through. That is the change side of the ledger done without erasing the keep side. On a $2 million brief the same logic simply runs further, with more of the plan reworked, services renewed and a rear addition, while the street face stays quietly itself. You can see the finished rooms on the Harvey Street project page.

Some questions only your site can answer

No article can tell you what your house must keep, because the answer lives in documents only your address has. Before design starts, we assemble the decide list:

• The citation and statement of significance, so the keep list is written down rather than assumed.
• The schedule entry, to see which extra controls are switched on for your place: internal alterations, external paint, trees.
• A Victorian Heritage Register check. If the house is state-listed, Heritage Victoria offers free pre-application meetings, and using one early can save a redesign later.
• What the street will see. Under Clause 43.01, a pool or spa, a deck, visible domestic services, an EV charger, a rainwater tank and a fence each need a permit when visible from a street (a lane does not count) or a public park, and any pergola or verandah needs one regardless. The clause lists each of them as a VicSmart class, Victoria’s simpler permit track for minor works, and where they sit is a design decision from the first sketch.
• What the structure will take. Old houses hide things behind their linings, and what the engineer finds once walls are opened can change both scope and price, so structural investigation belongs early.

With that list on the table, the design is drawn for its assessment from day one rather than trimmed to fit afterwards, and that gives a brief its best chance of keeping its life through council.

This is how we run a $2 million heritage brief

At this end of the market, sequence protects the budget as much as design does. This is the order we work in:

1. One hour at the table. The Feasibility Session is one hour, in person or on Zoom, with Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA. You work through logistics, budget and planning timelines together, with no obligation.
2. A fixed fee, staged. Schematics come first, on a fee agreed before the work starts, so the design fee does not climb with the construction cost. Our fixed-fee approach sets out what that certainty covers.
3. Two sketches, one decision. Barbara draws what your budget achieves beside what your full wish list would cost, with a shopping list between them, so you choose the scope on paper instead of discovering it through variations.
4. One integrated application. Where heritage sits beside structural or coastal questions, we resolve them in one design and lodge them together. On the practice’s Brighton and Hampton work under two overlays, that has typically reached approval faster than running the applications one after another.
5. A record, stated as a record. BY Projects Architecture brings 59-plus heritage approvals at a 98 per cent success rate and 400-plus projects across Victoria, and Barbara brings 35-plus years in practice. That history shapes how we read your citation; it is never a forecast for your application.

The same sequence runs across every Melbourne era we work on, heritage or not, and our page for renovation architects in Melbourne sets out how it applies to the rest of the house.

Closing

A $2 million heritage renovation keeps what the citation protects, repairs it to the same details, and changes what the overlay leaves open or will permit: the plan, the light, the services and the rear. The budget cannot buy permission, but a keep list settled first lets it buy a house that lives the way you do. Bring the citation, the schedule entry and your wish list to a one-hour Feasibility Session with Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA. Our 59-plus heritage approvals are history; the conversation at the table is your first real answer.

Frequently asked questions about a $2M heritage renovation

Q: Can I open up the inside of a heritage house in Melbourne?

A: Yes, where your documents allow it. Under Clause 43.01, internal alterations need a planning permit only where the overlay schedule switches on internal alteration controls for your place, so check that entry first. If the house is on the Victorian Heritage Register, the approval comes from Heritage Victoria under the Heritage Act 2017, and it generally requires a permit for interior works. Either way, removing a load-bearing wall is structural work: it needs an engineer’s design and, generally, a building permit, which is a separate approval from planning.

Q: Does a bigger budget make a heritage approval more likely?

A: Not directly. Council assesses a heritage application against the significance of the place: the statement of significance, the heritage study and whether the location, bulk, form and appearance of new work would harm that significance. A larger budget helps in other ways, by paying for better investigation, documentation and design, but it is not part of the test. BY Projects Architecture’s 59-plus heritage approvals at a 98 per cent success rate are a practice record, not a forecast for your application.

Q: What should I have in hand before committing $2 million to a heritage renovation?

A: Five things: the heritage citation with its statement of significance, the schedule entry showing which controls apply, a Victorian Heritage Register check, a current survey and title, and an honest wish list. Bring them to a one-hour Feasibility Session and Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA, will work through what the house can take alongside budget, logistics and planning timelines. There is no obligation.

Q: Do I need a registered architect for a heritage renovation this size?

A: The planning system does not require an architect to lodge an application, but Victoria does protect the title: only a person registered with the Architects Registration Board of Victoria can call themselves an architect, and the register is public. At this budget the sharper question is who holds design authority across the heritage case, the structure, the services and the fee. Choose on fit, check the register, and ask to see built work.

About BY Projects Architecture

BY Projects Architecture is a Melbourne practice with 400-plus projects across Victoria, spanning renovations, extensions, new homes, heritage and adaptive reuse. It is led by Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA, who has 35-plus years in practice. We would rather show you what your house can take before you spend on it than redraw it after council has asked for changes.

Citations

• Heritage Overlay, Clause 43.01, Victoria Planning Provisions (Department of Transport and Planning). The permit triggers for demolition, external alterations, new buildings and works (including pools, decks, domestic services, EV chargers, rainwater tanks and fences visible from a street or public park), the internal, paint and tree controls that apply only where the schedule says so, the like-for-like repair trigger, and the decision guidelines built on significance. https://planning-schemes.app.planning.vic.gov.au/Victoria%20Planning%20Provisions/ordinance/43.01
• Local heritage protection, Planning Victoria. How local heritage places reach the Heritage Overlay, what a citation and statement of significance contain, when a council permit is needed, and when Heritage Victoria approval applies instead. https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/guides-and-resources/guides/all-guides/local-heritage-protection
• Do I need a heritage permit?, Heritage Victoria. The works that generally need a heritage permit on a Victorian Heritage Register place, interior works included, and the free pre-application meetings. https://www.heritage.vic.gov.au/permits-and-approvals/do-i-need-a-permit
• Victorian Local Heritage Guidelines, Planning Victoria. The guidelines that replaced Planning Practice Note 1, and confirmation that places already listed in the Heritage Overlay schedule are not affected by them. https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/guides-and-resources/council-resources/victorian-heritage-guidelines
• What is an architect?, Architects Registration Board of Victoria. Who may use the title architect in Victoria, what registration requires, and where to check the public register. https://www.arbv.vic.gov.au/what-architect

Related reading: more on Melbourne heritage renovation

• Heritage renovation in Toorak, Armadale and Malvern: a Stonnington guide
• Who can extend a heritage or character home in Melbourne, and what does the overlay allow?
• What makes a luxury heritage home extension work in Melbourne’s inner-east
• Renovating or knocking down and rebuilding under a Heritage Overlay
• How do architect fees and scope work for a heritage renovation?

About the Author

Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA, is the founder of BY Projects Architecture. With 35+ years of experience, she specializes in sustainable, community-focused design and heritage restoration. A dedicated mentor and rower, Barbara balances her high-impact Melbourne practice with a passion for social inclusion and passive, energy-saving design.