Who actually decides this
Most planning applications are never voted on by a councillor. Council has a published process for changing that, and it is widely misdescribed.
Most planning applications in Victoria are never voted on by a councillor. They are decided by a council officer under delegated authority. The permit already issued at this same site — PP-825/2025 — was decided that way.
Council does have a published process for moving an application from an officer to the elected Planning Committee. It is worth understanding accurately, because it is widely misdescribed.
How the call-in process actually works
Only a councillor can call in an application
Residents cannot. What residents can do is lodge submissions, and then ask a councillor to consider using the process.
The application must first be eligible
Under Council’s current Planning Committee Terms of Reference, a councillor may request a call-in only where an application has 10 or more objections or submissions, or where officers recommend refusing it. Councillors receive a weekly list of applications meeting those criteria.
Eligibility is not the same as a hearing
A call-in is not automatic. The ward councillor, a second councillor and the Planning Committee Chairperson must all agree, and the councillor requesting it must give a reason, which is recorded in a publicly available call-in register.
If it is called in, you can speak
At a Planning Committee hearing the officer presents the report, the applicant may speak for up to ten minutes, and each objector may speak for three minutes. Councillors can ask questions, and the Committee makes Council’s final decision that day. Objectors are notified of the meeting.
To be exact about it: submissions can make an application eligible for councillor consideration. Whether a call-in happens, and what is then decided, remain matters for councillors applying the planning scheme to this particular proposal. Anyone who tells you that ten objections means councillors decide has it wrong.
Sources: City of Greater Geelong, Planning Committee Terms of Reference version 10, adopted 28 October 2025; Planning Committee meetings; S6 Instrument of Delegation to Members of Council Staff, Council Meeting Agenda, 26 May 2026. The threshold was six submissions before 28 October 2025.
What this means for you, in order
1. Lodge your own submission
It has to be your own genuine concerns, in your own words. This is what puts you on Council’s statutory record, what gets you notified of the decision, what gives you standing to seek a review — and what counts toward the threshold that makes the application eligible for consideration at all. How to make a submission.
2. Then write to a councillor
Ask them to consider the published call-in process. Give site-specific reasons. Councillors’ email addresses and mobile numbers are published by Council.
What you are asking for, and what you are not
A call-in request is a request for a public hearing. It is not a request that councillors decide the outcome in advance. Asking an elected representative to prejudge an application is improper and would harm your case rather than help it. What you are asking for is that the application be determined in the open, where the officer, the applicant and objectors are all heard.
Write to a councillor
Highton sits in Barrabool Hills Ward, represented by Cr Ron Nelson. Check which ward covers your own street before you write — Council lists all eleven.
Council’s Mayor and councillors pagePublished contact details for all eleven wards Open a pre-written emailAdd the councillor’s address, and your own reasons, before sendingDear Councillor, I am a resident writing about advertised planning permit application PP-909/2025, a 116-place childcare centre at 297-307 Roslyn Road, Highton. I have lodged my own submission with Council setting out my concerns. I am writing to ask you to consider the call-in process set out in Council's Planning Committee Terms of Reference, so that this application is determined by the Planning Committee in a public hearing rather than under officer delegation. I am not asking you to decide the application in advance, or to take a position on the outcome. I am asking for it to be heard in public, where objectors can speak and councillors can question the officer and the applicant. My site-specific reasons are: - The zone requires Council to consider the safety, efficiency and amenity effects of the traffic the proposal would generate. I can find no traffic assessment in the advertised documents. - A childcare centre was already permitted at 240 Roslyn Road in 2023. Nothing in this application assesses what the two would mean together. - The site is on a road Council has recently spent money making safer for the school run. - Several documents relied on by the applicant's own consultants are named in the advertised papers but are not published for the public to read. I would appreciate knowing whether you will consider a call-in request. Yours sincerely, [your name] [your street and suburb]
Examples of the decision process
These examples show that Geelong’s Planning Committee can reach a different decision from Council officers after considering a particular application and hearing from the parties. They are not legal precedents, and they do not establish what the outcome of PP-909/2025 should be. Each application is assessed under its own planning controls, evidence and site circumstances.
127 Christies Road, Leopold
Proposal: 72-place childcare centre
Objections: 61
Officers: recommended a Notice of Decision to Grant
Committee: refusal carried, 23 July 2026
Since: too recent for any review outcome to be known.
Different site — process example only
65–105 Lings Road, Connewarre
Proposal: restaurant, function centre and children’s farm
Objections: not recorded here
Officers: recommended approval subject to conditions
Committee: refusal carried, 10 November 2022
Since: VCAT affirmed the refusal and ordered that no permit be granted.
Different site — process example only
149 Bellarine Highway, Newcomb
Proposal: service station, drive-through restaurant and car wash
Officers: recommended a Notice of Decision to Grant
Committee: refusal carried, 26 May 2022
Since: the applicant went to VCAT, and a permit was issued on 20 December 2023.
Different site — process example only
Three different uses, one common thread: officers assessed each proposal as acceptable, and councillors, having heard from objectors, did not agree.
And what happened next
We have shown the review outcomes deliberately, because they cut both ways. At Connewarre the refusal held: VCAT affirmed it and ordered that no permit be granted. At Newcomb it did not: the applicant appealed and a permit was issued at VCAT in December 2023.
An applicant who is refused can seek review at VCAT, and sometimes wins. A committee refusal is not the end of the road, and anyone telling you otherwise is overselling it. What a public hearing does guarantee is that the decision is made by elected representatives, in the open, after objectors have spoken — rather than by one officer reading a file.
Being straight with you
We do not know how many submissions Council has recorded for this application, so we cannot tell you whether it is eligible yet. We also could not locate the public call-in register as a separately published page. And we have found no Council minute stating that an application was called in because residents asked — minutes record the councillor’s call-in, not the conversations that preceded it. What can fairly be said is that residents may ask councillors to consider the process. It cannot fairly be said that asking compels anything.