Have your say
How to make a submission on PP-909/2025, what you will need, and what happens afterwards.
The direct link
Objections and letters of support are both made through Council’s application page. The objection form is partway down that page, under “Objections / Support”.
Open Council’s official application pageapp.geelongcity.vic.gov.auhttps://app.geelongcity.vic.gov.au/advertisedplanning/adlist_detail.aspx?app_number=909%2F2025
Not sure what to write? Council only acts on certain kinds of concern. Our three-question helper turns what bothers you into the language Council actually weighs — then you paste it into their form.
What you will need
- Your name, postal address, suburb and postcode
- A contact phone number and email address
- The substance of your objection or support — how the application affects you
- Optionally, one attached file: a single
.pdf,.docor.txt, up to 4 MB
Other ways to lodge
If you would rather not use the online form, Council provides a downloadable objection form. Council’s guidance says a submission can also be emailed to Statutory Planning or posted as a hard copy. There is no requirement under the Act to use any particular form.
Timing
Council currently lists 6 August 2026 as the closing date for public comment, and states it will not decide before that date. Council’s own guidance says late submissions will be considered if a decision has not yet been made, and that a submission may be lodged any time after advertising commences and before a decision. That is not a reason to wait — a submission in hand before the closing date is the one certain to be counted.
Does your voice actually matter?
Yes, and there are two reasons worth knowing.
A submission is what keeps you in the process. Council notifies everyone who made a submission of the decision when it is made, and sends details of the review process at VCAT with it. If you make no submission, you are not notified and you have no standing to seek a review. This advertising period is the point at which the public is invited in. Council states it will not decide before the closing date, and that submissions received before a decision are taken into account.
Council has refused childcare centres before, against its own officers’ advice. In July 2026 the City of Greater Geelong’s planning committee refused a 72-place, two-storey childcare centre at 127 Christies Road, Leopold, with a 15-space car park. Council officers had recommended a permit be granted. The application attracted 61 objections raising location, traffic, noise, waste, safety, overlooking and overshadowing. The committee refused it on grounds including incompatibility with the surrounding residential character, not appropriately serving a local community need in a suitable location, inappropriate design, and unacceptable traffic impacts.
Councillors sit on that committee and their contact details are published on Council’s Mayor and councillors page.
The other side of it
It does not always go that way, and it is worth knowing that before you invest hope in it. In 2018 Council refused a 90-place childcare centre in Grovedale on neighbourhood character and traffic grounds, after a petition of more than 700 signatures. VCAT overturned that refusal and granted the permit. The Tribunal has repeatedly held that a lack of demonstrated need will rarely, if ever, be a ground for refusing a permit — so an objection built on “we do not need another one” is unlikely to carry weight on its own.
What that history suggests is that submissions grounded in specific, local, first-hand effects — traffic, access, amenity, the character of a particular street — are the ones that hold up.
Sources: Council’s application page, objection terms and submission guidance; Geelong Times and Surf Coast Times reporting on the Leopold decision, July 2026; reporting on the 2018 Grovedale VCAT decision; Walsh v Greater Geelong CC [2020] VCAT 772.
Writing it
- Use your own words. A short submission describing your own experience carries more weight than a long one copied from someone else.
- Be specific about you. Which route you walk, which crossing your children use, when you drive it, what you can see or hear from your property.
- One issue per point. Dot points, not paragraphs.
- Suggest a fix if you have one. Council’s guidance explicitly welcomes it.
- Check what carries weight. See What Council can consider.
What is public
Council says copies of your objection or letter of support are public documents, and that your name and postal address may be viewed as part of the planning process. Contact details are excluded. Council must make objections available for inspection under section 57(5) of the Planning and Environment Act 1987, and a copy is also provided to the applicant. Do not include anything in a submission you would not want read by the applicant.
What happens next
Once the notice period closes, the planner assesses the application together with all submissions received. Everyone who made a submission receives a copy of the decision and details of the review process at VCAT. Council’s page notes that supporters do not have review rights at VCAT.
A petition is counted as a single objection, with correspondence going to the first person named on it. Individual submissions count individually.
Council’s application page and its objection form state different periods for lodging a review at VCAT. We have not reproduced either figure here. The decision you receive will set out the applicable period.