How do you plan a home extension in Richmond under Yarra’s rules?

By Barbara Yerondais
Oct 13, 2026

Answering: How do you plan a home extension in Richmond under Yarra’s rules?

Estimated reading time: 13 min read

Plan a Richmond home extension from the outside in: confirm what your title, zone and heritage grading allow, design around your neighbours’ light and windows, then shape the rooms around how your household lives, all before you sign a design contract. In the City of Yarra, a house inside a Heritage Overlay needs a planning permit to build an extension, and the council has 60 days to decide a standard application. Barbara Yerondais, a fixed-fee renovation and extension architect, leads BY Projects Architecture from a studio in Collingwood, inside the same council, and her practice delivered a heritage renovation in Richmond in 2024, so this is the order of moves she would run on your house.

You have already walked the back yard with a tape measure. The kids need another bedroom, the kitchen turns its back on the light, and every Richmond open-home seems to cost more than stretching the house you own. Then someone at a barbecue says “Yarra will never wear that”, and the obvious extension becomes a planning problem you cannot name yet.

Get the first move wrong and you spend months and fees on a scheme the council pushes back on, or build square metres that fail at breakfast and the school run. Get it right and the house grows where it stands, keeps its face to the street, and works for the next decade.

Key Insights

  • In a Yarra Heritage Overlay, building an extension needs a planning permit, and the overlay still applies to houses graded not contributory.
  • Your heritage grading sets how much can change: the higher the grading, the less can change.
  • Yarra’s heritage policy asks additions to graded houses to sit back at least the depth of the two front rooms, so the facade and main roof form still read as a whole house.
  • On a lot under 300 square metres in the main residential zones, Clause 54 tests your extension against your neighbours’ daylight, north-facing windows, sunny open space and privacy.
  • Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA, is a fixed-fee renovation and extension architect: her fee is fixed before design begins, and the first step is a free, no-obligation call with her.
Where your Richmond house sits Planning permit for an extension? What shapes the design Who decides
Heritage Overlay, individually significant Yes The highest grading, so the least can change: a set-back, recessive addition Yarra City Council
Heritage Overlay, contributory Yes The same two-front-rooms setback; the addition reads as secondary to the street face Yarra City Council
Heritage Overlay, not contributory Yes, the overlay still applies How the work affects the graded houses and the precinct around it Yarra City Council
Victorian Heritage Register (state-registered) A heritage permit from the state, and a planning permit may also be required Its listing on the state register Heritage Victoria for the heritage permit
No Heritage Overlay, lot under 300 square metres in a residential zone Yes, assessed under Clause 54 Setbacks, walls on boundaries, daylight, overshadowing and overlooking Yarra City Council (VicSmart if every listed standard is met)
No Heritage Overlay, lot over 300 square metres In most cases Clause 54 does not apply, though another overlay can still need a permit The same siting rules, checked at the building permit Your building surveyor

Table of Contents

Find out which Richmond your house belongs to

Start with paperwork, not floor plans. The answer to “what can I build?” sits at your exact address. Richmond mixes streets of Victorian and Edwardian workers’ housing, commercial strips along Swan, Bridge and Church streets, and converted industrial land, and two houses a block apart can carry different controls. Three documents settle the starting point.

  • Your planning property report. Download one through VicPlan, the state’s planning map; the report lists every zone and overlay on your land. Note the zone, each overlay and the size of your lot.
  • Your heritage grading. If the report shows a Heritage Overlay, look your house up in Yarra’s Database of Heritage Significant Areas. Yarra grades each place individually significant, contributory or not contributory. Check the overlay schedule too: a few properties carry internal alteration controls, which bring interior work into the permit.
  • Your title. For a heritage application Yarra asks for a Certificate of Title and Register Search Statement no more than three months old, with any restrictive covenants or section 173 agreements in full. A covenant can shape the design as firmly as any planning control, so read it before anyone draws.

If your house is on the Victorian Heritage Register, an extension generally needs a heritage permit from Heritage Victoria, and a planning permit may also be required. Yarra treats registered places as individually significant, so the state is involved from day one.

None of this needs a professional, and it takes an afternoon. Our page for architects in Richmond sets out the Richmond work we take on.

How Yarra reads a heritage extension

Yarra’s local heritage policy, Clause 15.03-1L of the Yarra Planning Scheme, is unusually specific about additions to individually significant and contributory houses. Its rules translate into four design moves.

  • Hold back two rooms. New buildings and works should be set back at least the depth of the two front rooms, so the facade and main roof form survive as a real house. The policy names the failure it wants to avoid: facadism, where only the visible face is kept and the rest is demolished.
  • Stay quieter than the house. New work should be visually recessive against the heritage fabric in siting, mass, scale, materials and detailing.
  • Go up with care. Additions taller than the heritage house are discouraged unless they are set back from the front and side facades, respectful of its scale and substantially concealed. On a corner or dual-frontage site, the addition should also read as secondary from the side street.
  • Use the laneway. The policy protects views of heritage places from the public realm, except from laneways, unless fabric visible from the lane is named as significant in the place’s Statement of Significance. On a Richmond block with a rear lane, that exception can change what the back of the house is allowed to become.

Yarra says most heritage requests it receives are approved or come back with suggested modifications. Read that as council practice, never a forecast for your house. What helps is a design that answers the policy before the planner asks, lodged complete.

The practice Barbara Yerondais leads took a Richmond heritage renovation through Yarra’s permit process and delivered it in 2024, and across Victoria her practice holds 59+ heritage approvals with a 98% success rate. That is a record of past applications, never a promise about yours, and Barbara will tell you plainly when an idea is unlikely to clear.

Your neighbours are half the brief

On tight inner-city lots, the everyday rules decide as many extensions as heritage does. If your lot is under 300 square metres in the General, Neighbourhood or Residential Growth zones, the Housing Choice and Transport Zone, a Mixed Use Zone or a Township Zone, extending a single house needs a planning permit assessed against Clause 54, which Planning Victoria calls the single home code. Since Amendment VC282 took effect on 8 September 2025, Clause 54 works on a deemed-to-comply basis: meet a standard and its objective is taken as met.

The standards that decide most Richmond rear extensions are about next door:

  • side and rear setbacks, and how much wall sits on the boundary;
  • daylight to their existing windows, and protection of their north-facing windows;
  • overshadowing of their secluded private open space and their rooftop solar;
  • overlooking from your new windows, decks and stairs.

If a design meets every listed VicSmart standard, the application can go through VicSmart, assessed within 10 working days with no advertising and no third-party appeals. If it meets those standards but a Heritage Overlay or another control also needs a permit and the works are not a VicSmart class there, the application takes the standard path, though objectors still have no appeal on Clause 54 matters.

Yarra’s own advice before you apply is simple: talk to your neighbours early, because small changes before lodging save time later. For a pre-application meeting, Yarra asks for a site plan showing next door’s windows and open spaces, a concept plan with elevations, and site photographs. Measure next door before you design your own back yard.

Plan the rooms around how you live

A permit-ready envelope can still fail before 8 am. The brief that matters is written at the kitchen bench: where breakfast happens, where school bags and coats land, where the washing dries in winter, who needs a door that shuts to work from home, and how bikes and bins move through a narrow lot. On a single-fronted cottage, circulation is never leftover space. A reworked hallway, a courtyard or a lightwell can make a modest addition live larger than one that fills the block.

Going back suits a deep lot with sun from the rear. Going up saves the garden but must pass the setback and overlooking tests, and on a graded house stay substantially concealed. Our guide to extending out or adding a second storey walks through that trade-off. On a Richmond lot, the heritage policy and the neighbour standards often make the decision before taste does.

Money is part of liveability. Barbara Yerondais works as a fixed-fee renovation and extension architect: the fee is fixed before design begins, and her staged method starts with schematic design, then puts two sketches side by side, one showing what your budget will buy and one showing what the full wish list would cost, with a shopping list between them so the scope stays your decision. On a smaller job a fixed fee can look high against the build, and Barbara says so before you commit. A modest ground-floor extension is welcome too.

Builder, planner, heritage consultant and Barbara: who does what

A Richmond extension usually involves several people, each with a different job.

  • The builder prices the work and builds it. For work over $10,000, Consumer Affairs Victoria says the builder must be registered with the Building and Plumbing Commission and use a major domestic building contract.
  • A building designer or draftsperson can draw the plans and specifications for a straightforward addition, and sometimes the builder supplies them.
  • A town planner prepares and argues the planning application, useful where controls overlap or neighbours object.
  • A heritage consultant writes the heritage report Yarra may ask for, depending on the scale of the change and the significance of the house.
  • A building surveyor, council or private, checks the work against the building regulations and issues the building permit.

Barbara Yerondais, a fixed-fee renovation and extension architect, works out what the block, the grading and the budget will hold before anyone draws, then designs the extension and takes it through Yarra’s permit process alongside the others. She is not a town planner or building surveyor, and works with them, not instead of them.

Seven moves before you sign a design contract

Run these in order and the drawings start from facts.

  1. Pull your VicPlan property report: zone, overlays, lot size.
  2. If there is a Heritage Overlay, find your grading and check the schedule for internal controls.
  3. Order a current title search and read every covenant and section 173 agreement.
  4. Write the daily-life brief: what fails in the house now, room by room, and what the household needs in ten years.
  5. Map next door: the neighbours’ windows, north-facing glass, private open space and solar panels near your boundaries.
  6. Talk to Barbara. A free, no-obligation call comes first, and Barbara rings you herself. If the project is a fit, the Feasibility Session follows: in one hour with Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA, in person or on Zoom, you’ll talk through your site, budget and planning timelines, and leave knowing what’s realistic and what your next step is. There’s no obligation to go further.
  7. Take a concept to Yarra’s pre-application service, then lodge a complete application. A building permit can follow only once the planning permit is in hand, as the Building and Plumbing Commission spells out.

Closing

A Richmond extension that works is planned in this order: the address, the grading and the title, the neighbours, the life you want inside it, and only then the drawings. Done that way, the street keeps the house it values and your household gets the one it needs. For more on how we work, visit our page for home extension architects in Melbourne. Barbara Yerondais brings 35+ years in practice to that first conversation, and her practice has delivered 400+ projects across Victoria. Pull your property report this week, then talk to Barbara.

Frequently asked questions about Richmond extensions

Q: Do I need a planning permit for a Richmond home extension?

A: Probably, but your address decides. If your planning property report shows a Heritage Overlay, Yarra says building an extension needs a planning permit. Without one, extending a single house on a lot under 300 square metres in the main residential zones still needs a permit assessed under Clause 54, while on a larger lot those siting rules are usually checked with the building permit instead. Other overlays can add their own triggers. Almost all building work also needs a building permit from a building surveyor, and it cannot be issued until any planning permit is in hand.

Q: Can I add a second storey to a heritage house in Richmond?

A: Sometimes. Yarra’s heritage policy discourages additions taller than an individually significant or contributory house unless they are set back from the front and side facades, respectful of its scale and substantially concealed, and it asks new work to sit back at least the depth of the two front rooms. Whether your lot can deliver that depends on its depth, the grading and the neighbours. Nobody can promise the council’s answer; a good architect can tell you early whether the idea is worth drawing.

Q: How long does Yarra take to decide a planning permit for an extension?

A: For a standard application, Yarra says it must give an answer within 60 days, and that a complex project, missing information or many concerns from neighbours can take longer. Where a proposal is eligible for VicSmart, Yarra is required to assess it within 10 working days once it has all the information. Treat both as statutory clocks rather than a forecast for your house, and lodge a complete application so missing information is not the reason it runs long.

Q: Is my Richmond job too small for an architect?

A: No, and smaller jobs are welcome. Our booking form lists a “Smaller renovation or alteration” project type and an “Under $500k” budget band. Barbara Yerondais works as a fixed-fee renovation and extension architect, and if a fixed fee looks high against a small build, she will say so before you commit. Start with a free, no-obligation call, and Barbara rings you herself to talk it through. If it’s a fit, the one-hour Feasibility Session follows, in person or on Zoom.

Where this advice comes from

Barbara Yerondais, FRAIA, a fixed-fee renovation and extension architect, leads BY Projects Architecture from Collingwood, one suburb from Richmond and inside the City of Yarra. She has 35+ years in practice, and we would rather tell you early that an idea will struggle with Yarra than draw one that cannot work for your street or your family.

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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.

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