Amendment C331yara - Live Music Entertainment Precincts
Amendment to introduce live music precincts in Yarra.
Council has requested the Minister for Planning authorise this Amendment to be exhibited.
At its Meeting on Tuesday, 16 December 2025, Council considered the proposed amendment and resolved to request that the Minister for Planning authorise the Amendment for public exhibition.
The documents adopted at this meeting can be viewed below.
Overview
Live music has always been an integral part of the City of Yarra. The City of Yarra is a vibrant, inner-city municipality, and our live music scene is a large part of our economic and cultural fabric, lighting up our city, providing opportunities for up-and-coming artists and boosting our economy.
With a concentration of 77 small to medium sized music venues in our 19.5 square kilometres municipality, the City of Yarra is recognised as a destination for live music. Yarra recognises that these venues are critical in developing artists, emerging musicians, and industry workers across Yarra. Every year Yarra's live music venues host about 20,000 gigs, attracting 2.5 million attendees, supporting Yarra’s businesses in its activity centres.
Live music venues are under increasing pressure from rising rents, licensing fees, higher operating costs, falling food and beverage sales, noise complaints (incl. from new apartment developments) and broader cost-of-living challenges. Many are also struggling to obtain public liability insurance, with those able to secure insurance experiencing premium increases of up to 800%.
Identifying live music precincts within the City of Yarra will establish these areas with live music as a priority and acknowledged use. This will aid in recognising the significant contribution that live music makes to the municipality and support the retention, growth and continued operation of live music venues within Yarra.
Amendment C331yara proposes to update the Yarra Planning Scheme to designate live music precincts within the City of Yarra and give statutory effect to the findings within the Live Music Precincts Background Issues, Opportunities and Actions (City of Yara, 2025).
Land affected by the amendment
The amendment applies to live music entertainment venues within the City of Yarra, specifically land identified in the 5 precincts of Brunswick Street, Smith Street south, Johnston Street, Collingwood Yards, and Richmond Station Live Music Precincts, plus individual venues outside of the precincts, as seen in the map below.
Amendment documents
What stage is this amendment at?
There are six steps in the process to consider amendments.
This project is currently at Stage 1 - 'Authorisation' of the process.
Council has requested the Minister for Planning to authorise Amendment C331yara for exhibition.
What are the next steps?
Current
Council has resolved to request the Minister for Planning to authorise the Amendment for public exhibition. If the Minister for Planning provides consent, Council will exhibit the amendment in accordance with the Planning and Environment Act 1987.
Exhibition will be held to provide an opportunity to help shape the future of live music by providing a submission on Amendment C331yara as part of the planning scheme amendment process.
Following submissions from the community, Council will consider them and resolve to submit the amendment and submissions to an independent public hearing, where all views will be heard and considered.
The panel or committee will review the amendment and all submissions and will release a report with recommendations.
Council will consider the recommendations from the hearing report and adopt a final position on the amendment. Council would then request the Minister for Planning to make a decision on the amendment.
The Minister will consider the exhibited amendment, recommendations from the committee hearing and Councils adopted position to make a decision on the amendment.
Current
Council has resolved to request the Minister for Planning to authorise the Amendment for public exhibition. If the Minister for Planning provides consent, Council will exhibit the amendment in accordance with the Planning and Environment Act 1987.
Exhibition will be held to provide an opportunity to help shape the future of live music by providing a submission on Amendment C331yara as part of the planning scheme amendment process.
Following submissions from the community, Council will consider them and resolve to submit the amendment and submissions to an independent public hearing, where all views will be heard and considered.
The panel or committee will review the amendment and all submissions and will release a report with recommendations.
Council will consider the recommendations from the hearing report and adopt a final position on the amendment. Council would then request the Minister for Planning to make a decision on the amendment.
The Minister will consider the exhibited amendment, recommendations from the committee hearing and Councils adopted position to make a decision on the amendment.
What has happened so far?
Complete
Officers have been working with live music venue owners and operators at roundtables and workshops to understand the challenges and issues facing the sector. This work has informed the background discussion paper that underpins the proposed introduction of live music venues and precincts into the Yarra Planning Scheme.
Complete
Officers have been working with live music venue owners and operators at roundtables and workshops to understand the challenges and issues facing the sector. This work has informed the background discussion paper that underpins the proposed introduction of live music venues and precincts into the Yarra Planning Scheme.
Frequently asked questions
The Planning Scheme defines a live music entertainment venue as:
- a food and drink premises, nightclub, function centre or residential hotel that includes live music entertainment,
- a rehearsal studio,
- any other venue used for the performance of music.
The Planning Scheme defines a noise sensitive residential use as a community care accommodation, dwelling, residential aged care facility, residential village, retirement village, rooming house or small second dwelling.
There is a lack of state-wide data or guidance that establishes a precise quantitative measure for planning live music venues, and the planning scheme provides little mechanism for local governments to address live music venues within clusters.
The Planning Policy Framework sets out the broad policy basis for planning decisions about amenity considerations, including noise. It stresses that everyone working and living in an area maintains a healthy and liveable amount of noise amenity in their day-to-day activities. It also encourages existing developments and venues to implement noise attenuation measures. This can come in many forms, such as compliance with noise-related permit conditions or negotiations between residents and venues.
Clause 53.06 Live music entertainment venues
The agent of change principle is included in Clause 53.06 Live music entertainment venues to help manage the relationship between live music venues and sensitive residential uses. It assigns responsibility for noise attenuation towards the party that is developing or making a change to a piece of land.
Clause 53.06 requires a planning permit application for a live music entertainment venue or a noise-sensitive residential use within fifty metres of a live music entertainment venue. The schedule to this clause can be used to delineate where the clause does and does not apply.
Existing venues are already protected under this mechanism. It is also important to note that this noise attenuation control does not apply to extensions of an existing dwelling.
The practice note also makes note of the entertainment venue noise regulations within the Environment Protection Regulations 2021. The EPA’s Noise Protocol 1826.4 supports these regulations. This protocol prescribes the methodology for assessing effective noise levels to determine what level of noise is unreasonable under the regulations. Part II of the Noise Protocol applies to entertainment venues and events.
This does not mean that people within the area are free from the responsibility of noise management.
There will be no immediate impact on landowners/occupiers and current planning permits.
The current controls in the planning scheme will continue to apply to live planning permit applications and any future planning permit applications until the permanent controls are introduced into the Yarra Planning Scheme.
The other tools in the Planning Scheme will continue to apply and will need to continue to be considered when preparing a planning permit application.
Further information
To find out more, please contact the Strategic Planning unit.