The 10/30 rule: clearing around your house for bushfire
If your house is in a Bushfire Prone Area and was built before 10 September 2009, the state's 10/30 rule lets you clear trees within 10 m of it without a planning permit. Most of the hills is in a Bushfire Prone Area, so the building date is usually the test that decides it.
We connect you with a local arborist who works in the hills.
Ask for a quoteSherbrooke Forest. Photo: Patche99z, Public domain
What the rule lets you clear
Clause 52.12 of the planning scheme sets three distances around a building people live in. Inside each distance, the planning scheme's permit requirements don't apply to the clearing the clause describes.
- 10 m
- Any vegetation, trees included. This is the part people mean when they say "10/30".
- 30 m
- Any vegetation except trees: shrubs, undergrowth, blackberry, long grass.
- 50 m
- Any vegetation except trees, if your home is also in the Bushfire Management Overlay. The building dates for this one are a little different (below).
Get a free property report from VicPlan to see whether your block is in a Bushfire Prone Area and the Bushfire Management Overlay.
Checked 7 October 2026 against Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions).
Does it apply to your home?
Every one of these has to be true. Your property report answers the first. The second is on your home's building or planning permit.
- The house is in a designated Bushfire Prone Area. In 29 of the 32 suburbs we cover, the suburb's centre point is in one. Upper Ferntree Gully, Ferntree Gully and Kilsyth are the exceptions, but a centre point is one spot, so check your own block.
- The house was built before 10 September 2009, or approved by a planning or building permit issued before that date. A house built to replace one lost to bushfire between 1 January and 31 March 2009 also counts.
- The distance is measured from a building used for accommodation: your house, or a unit someone lives in. A shed or a garage doesn't start its own 10 m.
The 50 m rule has its own test. The house must be in the Bushfire Management Overlay, and built before 10 September 2009, or built lawfully without a planning permit before 18 November 2011, or approved before 10 September 2009 and built before 18 November 2011.
The Bushfire Management Overlay covers much of the hills. We sampled the planning maps at 25 points around each of 32 suburbs, and in 26 of them it came up at more than half the points.
Checked 7 October 2026 against Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions).
Checked 6 October 2026 against Victorian Government open spatial data.
It sits above the overlays
Where the conditions hold, the rule applies whatever overlay covers your block: landscape, vegetation, environmental or erosion. It also sits above the state's native vegetation and canopy-tree rules, and above a condition on an old planning permit that said a tree had to stay.
It covers the planning scheme and nothing else. It doesn't let you cut a tree on a neighbour's land or on the nature strip.
Checked 7 October 2026 against Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions).
Along a boundary fence
Another part of the same clause covers fence lines. In a Bushfire Prone Area, where the fence was built before 10 September 2009, vegetation along a boundary fence can be cleared to a combined width of 4 m across both sides. If one side is already cleared 4 m or more, up to 1 m can be cleared on the other.
The other side is your neighbour's land, so agree it with them before anyone cuts.
Checked 7 October 2026 against Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions).
If your house is newer
A house built and approved after 10 September 2009 doesn't get the 10/30 rule. If it was built under the Bushfire Management Overlay, its planning permit may set out how much cleared ground, called defendable space, has to be kept around it. Read that permit before clearing.
Checked 7 October 2026 against Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions).
Before anything is cut
A tree within 10 m of a house is the hardest kind to take down. There is no room to drop it in one piece, so it comes down in sections, often on a steep block with a power line nearby. Ask a local arborist to look at it and say how it would come down.
For the rules beyond 10/30, by council and overlay, see tree removal permits.
Ask for a quote
Tell us where you are and what needs doing. We pass it to a local arborist who works in the hills. They ring you back to talk about the job.