Tasmanian Planning Permit: Planning Approval for a Pet Business

Two lanes, two numbers, and one question that decides which

Tasmania publishes harder numbers than anywhere else in Australia. The State Planning Office states them plainly: "You can expect a decision within 28 calendar days for a Permitted, and 42 calendar days for a Discretionary application" (stateplanning.tas.gov.au). Those are not service targets. They come straight out of the Act.

The gap between the two lanes is bigger than fourteen days, though. Public notification sits in the discretionary lane only. Devonport City Council puts it in one sentence: "There is no right of objection by another party for 'Permitted' applications" (devonport.tas.gov.au). A Permitted application cannot be objected to by a neighbour, and it must be granted.

Which lane you are in depends on what your business is called under the Tasmanian Planning Scheme. For a pet business, that question has no published answer, and in Tasmania the stakes attached to it are the starkest in the country. This post shows you the lanes, the numbers, where the fork sits, and the exact question to put to your council before you sign a lease. For the national picture, start with our guide to planning approval across Australia.

This guide is general information for pet business owners in Tasmania. It is not legal, planning, accounting or financial advice, and it does not take account of your circumstances or your site. Australian development approval is set across state legislation, state planning instruments and local planning schemes, each published separately. This guide brings that fragmented material together. It is based on publicly available information, verified on 9 August 2026, and linked at the point each fact is stated. We maintain those links and re-check them, but we do not control what those bodies publish, and planning instruments change. You remain responsible for your own position: confirm it with your council or a qualified town planner, and make your own decision before you act. Petboost accepts no responsibility for any action taken on the basis of this article. Planning outcomes are also site-specific and discretionary: two identical businesses on two streets in the same council area can get different answers, and nothing here predicts what an authority will decide. If anything is inaccurate, tell us and we will correct it.

1. What it is called here, and who decides

In Tasmania the approval is a planning permit, and it comes from your council. The Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993 defines "planning authority" as "a council", and section 51(1) says a use or development that needs a permit must not commence unless "the planning authority which administers the scheme, the Commission, or the Tribunal, has granted a permit" (legislation.tas.gov.au). The State Planning Office says the same thing in four words: "Planning permits are issued by the local council" (stateplanning.tas.gov.au).

The rules your council applies come in two layers. The State Planning Provisions are state-wide and contain the use classes, the zone tables and the codes. Each council then has a Local Provisions Schedule that sits over the top with its own zone maps and any local additions. Together they are the Tasmanian Planning Scheme.

Keep the building side separate. Consumer, Building and Occupational Services classifies "Commercial, industrial or public buildings" as high risk work requiring "An application to council for a Building Permit" (cbos.tas.gov.au). A private building surveyor certifies the building work; the council still issues the building permit, and only the council issues the planning permit. There is no private certifier here who can hand you a change of use.

2. Your pathways here

Every proposal is sorted into one of five categories. Meander Valley Council lists them: "1. Exempt (general or limited) 2. No Permit Required 3. Permitted 4. Discretionary 5. Prohibited" (meander.tas.gov.au).

Read the No Permit Required row carefully, because it has five conditions, not one. Clause 6.6.1 of the State Planning Provisions requires that the Use Class is listed as no permit required in your zone table, that the proposal "complies with each applicable standard and does not rely on any Performance Criteria", that it is not Discretionary or Prohibited under any other provision, and that "a permit for such use and development is not required by a code" (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). Missing any one of them moves you across. And you still lodge something: Central Coast Council says "You still need to submit your plans to Council and be issued with a No Permit Required Certificate" (centralcoast.tas.gov.au).

The Performance Criterion is the trapdoor between the lanes. Every standard in the scheme has an Acceptable Solution, which is a measurable rule, and a Performance Criterion, which is an argument on the merits. Meet every Acceptable Solution and you can be Permitted. Rely on a single Performance Criterion anywhere, for parking, for hours, for a setback, and the whole application becomes Discretionary. The State Planning Office describes the Permitted lane as an application that "relies wholly on the measurable Acceptable Solutions" and which "must be approved and does not require consultation" (stateplanning.tas.gov.au).

What notification actually looks like. Section 57(3) of the Act requires the authority to "give notice, as prescribed, of an application for a permit", and section 57(5) allows "Any person" to make representations "during the period of 14 days commencing on the date on which notice of the application is given". Section 58, which governs Permitted applications, has no notification provision at all. Devonport describes the discretionary version on the ground: written notice to all adjoining owners and occupiers, a sign at the boundary of the land, an advertisement in the newspaper, and the file available for public inspection. Its summary is blunt: "Any person has a right to object to a discretionary application during the 14 day advertising period" (devonport.tas.gov.au).

The clock stops, and that is what really decides your timeline. The council can ask for more information within 14 days on a Permitted application and 21 days on a Discretionary one, and as the State Planning Office puts it, "If extra information is needed, the clock 'stops' and starts again once the applicant has supplied the information" (stateplanning.tas.gov.au). A complete application on day one is worth more than any amount of chasing.

If the council misses its clock, you do not lose. Section 59(1) says failure to determine an application in time "is deemed to constitute a decision to grant a permit on conditions to be determined by the Appeal Tribunal" (legislation.tas.gov.au). It is a permit, with the Tribunal writing the conditions, not a refusal.

There is one narrow no-permit route for a change of use. Clause 7.5 says a permit is not required to change from an existing lawful use to another use in the same Use Class, provided the new use is not otherwise Prohibited or Discretionary and relies on no Performance Criteria, and provided all seven of its conditions hold: no increase in floor area, no increase in required parking, no change to access, parking, loading or servicing, no change to the use of external areas, no increase or change in emissions, no increase in required utility capacity, and no extension of hours outside 8.00am to 6.00pm Monday to Sunday (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). Taking over a shop already lawfully used for the same Use Class is the one case where a Tasmanian change of use can need nothing at all.

Fees are set council by council. Section 86 of the Act makes payment a validity requirement, but the amount is set by each council under the Local Government Act 1993. There is no state-wide planning application fee, and we are not going to invent a range. As an illustration of the gap between the lanes, here is one council's published schedule, Devonport City Council for FY2027 and nowhere else (devonport.tas.gov.au):

Your council will publish its own numbers, and they will differ. What travels is the shape: the discretionary lane costs more, and the advertising is a separate line.

Starting without a permit is an offence. The State Planning Office states it directly: "If a permit is needed, it is an offence to start a use or development without it." Section 63(4) provides that a person convicted "is liable to a fine not exceeding 500 penalty units", plus up to 50 penalty units for each day a contravention continues. A penalty unit is $213 from 1 July 2026 (justice.tas.gov.au). Those are maximums a court may impose, not a bill anyone gets automatically. Worth knowing too: section 11(5) says it is not a defence that the use became lawful after the offence was committed, so retrospective approval does not undo the breach.

3. What your use is called here

The Tasmanian Planning Scheme sorts every proposal into one of 34 Use Classes in Table 6.2. The State Planning Office confirms the count: "There are 34 use classes, which you can find in Table 6.2. of the TPS".

None of them is called Personal Services. If you have read about planning in another state, that is the term you will be looking for, and it does not exist here. Two classes matter to a pet business (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au):

Domestic Animal Breeding, Boarding or Training | use of land for breeding, boarding or training domestic animals. Examples include an animal pound, cattery and kennel.

General Retail and Hire | use of land for selling goods or services, or hiring goods. Examples include an adult sex product shop, amusement parlour, beauty salon, betting agency, bottle shop, cellar door sales, commercial art gallery, department store, hairdresser, market, primary produce sales, local shop, shop, shop front dry cleaner and supermarket.

The stakes, in one zone table

The Central Business Zone of the State Planning Provisions is the clearest illustration in the country of why classification matters (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). In that zone:

• General Retail and Hire is No Permit Required.
• Service Industry is Discretionary, but only "If for alterations or extensions to an existing Service Industry". A new one does not qualify.
• Domestic Animal Breeding, Boarding or Training is not listed at all, and the table ends with the row "Prohibited | All other uses".

That last row is the whole mechanism. Clause 6.9.1(a) makes a use Prohibited if it "is not specified as being No Permit Required, Permitted or Discretionary within a Use Class in the applicable Use Table". A class that does not appear in your zone table is not merely harder. It cannot be granted a permit.

So in a Central Business Zone shopfront, the same premises with the same fit-out is either no permit at all or legally impossible, depending only on which Use Class the council puts it in. This is one zone in the State Planning Provisions, and each council's Local Provisions Schedule sits over the top, so check your own address rather than assuming it reads the same everywhere.

Where grooming sits: unresolved, and we are not going to guess

No Tasmanian planning authority states which Use Class a pet grooming salon falls into. We searched twelve council websites, looked for a TASCAT decision on the point, and scanned the section titles of all 28 operative Local Provisions Schedules for anything about animals, kennels, catteries or dogs. Nothing.

What the scheme does give you is its own method for categorising, in clause 6.2 (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au):

6.2.2 A use or development that is directly associated with and a subservient part of another use on the same site must be categorised into the same Use Class as that other use.

6.2.3 If a use or development fits a description of more than one Use Class, the Use Class most specifically describing the use applies.

6.2.4 If a use or development does not readily fit any Use Class, it must be categorised into the most similar Use Class.

Three things follow, and all three are facts rather than conclusions. The animal class is expressly limited to breeding, boarding or training, none of which a grooming-only salon does. The closest named analogues anywhere in Table 6.2 are "beauty salon" and "hairdresser", and both sit in General Retail and Hire. And clause 6.2.2 means that if grooming is one part of a boarding or daycare business on the same site, it is categorised into the same class as that business, which is the animal class.

That is an argument, not a determination, and your council makes the determination.

Key Takeaway: Ask your council, in writing, before you sign anything: which Use Class do you categorise a pet grooming salon into under clause 6.2 of the Tasmanian Planning Scheme, and will you issue a No Permit Required Certificate for this tenancy? In a zone where the animal class is not listed, that one answer is the difference between no application and no business.

The 300 metre rule, and the zones where it does not bite

Tasmania has something no other state offers a boarding operator: a state-wide, statutory separation distance rather than one council's policy. Table C9.1 of the Attenuation Code lists (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au):

Dog kennels | Commercial operations only - emissions such as odour and noise. | 300m

The Acceptable Solution is that the 300 metre attenuation area contains no existing sensitive use, no site with a permit for one, and no land in the residential, rural living, village or urban mixed use zones. Miss it and you are not shut out, but you are relying on a Performance Criterion, which makes the application Discretionary, advertised and open to objection.

And it has an off switch. Clause C9.2.2 says the code "does not apply to attenuation areas between the activities listed in Tables C9.1 and C9.2 where those activities occur within the Light Industrial Zone, General Industrial Zone, Port and Marine Zone, and Utilities Zone" (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). That tells a kennel operator exactly where the 300 metres does not bite. Note the code names dog kennels, commercial operations only. It does not name grooming.

Working from home? Table 3.1 defines a "home-based business" as use of part of a dwelling by a resident for non-residential purposes, subject to conditions including no more than two non-resident workers on site and one non-illuminated sign of no more than 0.2m² (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). It sits inside the Residential Use Class, which changes the zone table you read. Nothing animal-related appears in the scheme's list of exempt uses.

4. Existing use rights here

If the premises already has a lawful use that the current scheme would prohibit, section 12 of the Act protects the continuance of that use. The State Planning Office's plain version: "A planning scheme cannot stop a lawfully existing use under the Act if the existing use was established before the planning scheme came into operation, or if it predated a planning scheme" (stateplanning.tas.gov.au).

Two years of non-use ends it. Section 12(5) removes the protection where a use has stopped for a continuous period of 2 years, or for periods totalling 2 years in any 3 year period, or, for a seasonal use, where it does not take place for 2 years in succession. The State Planning Office says it in one line: "A use must be uninterrupted for two years to be considered continuous." Protection is also lost where the use is "substantially intensified", and where it is extended or transferred from one part of a parcel to another.

And the part people misread. An existing use right does not carry across to a different use. The same page states that it does not apply "if the owner or lessee wishes to change the use or development. In this case, a new application is needed", and adds: "Each case would be assessed individually by the council. An existing use right is no guarantee that the changed use or development would be approved."

There is one real saving for an established pet business that wants to alter its premises. Clause 7.2 of the State Planning Provisions says development associated with a use that is Discretionary in the zone "must be considered as if that Use Class had Permitted status", provided the proposal does not establish a new use or substantially intensify the existing one (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). A fit-out at an existing kennel is a different proposition from a new one.

Permits do not last forever either. Huon Valley Council states the rule: "All planning approvals for development applications must be substantially commenced within 2 years of the permit approval date otherwise the permit will lapse" (huonvalley.tas.gov.au).

5. If you are refused

Appeals go to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, Resource and Planning Stream, which "resolves appeals and applications regarding a wide range of administrative acts and decisions" (tascat.tas.gov.au). The Land Use Planning and Approvals Act is allocated to that stream by the Tribunal's own Act (legislation.tas.gov.au).

You get 14 days, and that is short. The State Planning Office: "The applicant and any person who made a representation (Discretionary applications only) may appeal the council's decision to the TASCAT within 14 calendar days of being notified of the decision" (stateplanning.tas.gov.au). Fourteen calendar days is barely long enough to read the reasons, take advice and decide. The Tribunal can extend time, but its own guidance is that "Extensions are not automatically granted and you may be a risk of losing your appeal rights if you don't lodge the appeal in the required timeframe" (tascat.tas.gov.au). If a refusal is even possible, work out your appeal position before the decision arrives, not after.

The fee is published and it is modest. TASCAT's fee schedule lists "Application/Appeal in Resource & Planning Stream" at $407.68 for 2026-2027, up from $397.28 the year before (tascat.tas.gov.au). That is the filing fee only, not the cost of running a case, and we are not publishing an estimate of legal or expert costs because nobody publishes one. A registrar can reduce or waive the fee for financial hardship (tascat.tas.gov.au).

The objector side is asymmetric, and it favours you. Under section 61(5) only a person who made a representation during the 14 day exhibition period can appeal, so a neighbour who said nothing has no appeal right. And the representor's right exists only where the council grants a permit. There is no objector appeal against a refusal. Devonport's own fact sheet, dated July 2021 and still naming the Tribunal's predecessor, states the same substance: "In the case of Council refusing to grant a planning permit, there is no right for an objector (representor) to lodge an appeal." Note the flip side: where an appeal is lodged against a decision to grant, the permit does not take effect until the appeal is decided or abandoned.

If a Permitted application was your lane, none of this arises. Section 58 applications must be granted, and there is nobody with standing to object.

What we could not verify

• Which Use Class a pet grooming salon takes. Twelve council websites searched, a TASCAT decision search, and a scan of the section titles of all 28 operative Local Provisions Schedules. No Tasmanian planning authority states it, in either direction.
• Any state-wide planning application fee or fee range. Not published. Fees are set council by council, so the Devonport figures above are one council's schedule and nothing more.
• Whether Tasmania has an operative private planning certifier scheme. The Act defines the term but the operative sections are not in the current consolidation we read, and we could not identify the amending Act or its commencement. We make no claim either way. What is safe: a planning permit comes from the council, and a building surveyor certifies building work rather than land use.
• Any current statutory time limit for TASCAT to determine a planning appeal. The 90 day figure that still circulates came from provisions omitted from the Tribunal's Act on 1 July 2025. No current source we read publishes a replacement.
• Whether a pet boarding or daycare facility of any given size is a Level 2 activity requiring referral to the Environmental Protection Authority. We did not read the relevant schedule, so treat it as an open question for a large facility.
• Two currency traps worth knowing. The State Planning Office's own "Amendment history" page stops at December 2024 and is five versions behind the scheme itself (stateplanning.tas.gov.au), so use the version control table inside the scheme (tpso.planning.tas.gov.au). And the Tasmanian Planning Scheme is not yet in force everywhere: Kingborough was still working through a draft Local Provisions Schedule as at its October 2025 update (kingborough.tas.gov.au), and its own planning fact sheets still refer to the Kingborough Interim Planning Scheme 2015. If your site is in Kingborough, ask which scheme applies before you read anything above onto it.
• Several council websites blocked us, including Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Circular Head. Treat any absence of a local rule as not found rather than as proof none exists.

One last thing, and it is the most useful sentence any Australian council has published for a pet business. Central Coast Council says commercial applications "should also include details about the nature of the business, operating hours, expected noise levels, location, design of signage and expected delivery vehicle requirements" (centralcoast.tas.gov.au). That list is also, almost exactly, the list of things a permit will put conditions on. Prepare it once and you have written half your application.

Verified 9 August 2026 against the sources below. Planning instruments change, and planning decisions are made on the merits of each site, so nothing here predicts what your authority will decide. Check the linked source and confirm your own position with your council or a qualified town planner before you act.

Sources

• Tasmanian Legislation, Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993: legislation.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Legislation, Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 2020: legislation.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions clause 6.4 to 6.9 Requirement for a permit: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions clause 6.2 Categorising Use or Development: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions Table 6.2 Use Classes: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions clause 16.2 Central Business Zone Use Table: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions clause 7.5 Change of Use: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions clause 7.2 Development for Existing Discretionary Uses: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions Table 3.1 Definitions: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions Table C9.1 Attenuation Distances: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions clause C9.2 Application of the Attenuation Code: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• Tasmanian Planning Commission, State Planning Provisions amendment history: tpso.planning.tas.gov.au
• State Planning Office, Council assessment pathways: stateplanning.tas.gov.au
• State Planning Office, Permits: stateplanning.tas.gov.au
• State Planning Office, Existing use rights and exemptions: stateplanning.tas.gov.au
• State Planning Office, Amendment history: stateplanning.tas.gov.au
• TASCAT, Resource and Planning Stream: tascat.tas.gov.au
• TASCAT, Making an application or appeal: tascat.tas.gov.au
• TASCAT, Fees: tascat.tas.gov.au
• TASCAT, Resource and Planning Stream fees: tascat.tas.gov.au
• Department of Justice Tasmania, Penalty units indexed amounts: justice.tas.gov.au
• Consumer Building and Occupational Services, Categories of building work: cbos.tas.gov.au
• Devonport City Council, Planning permits: devonport.tas.gov.au
• Devonport City Council, Fees and Charges 2026-27: devonport.tas.gov.au
• Devonport City Council, Planning Appeals fact sheet (July 2021): devonport.tas.gov.au
• Central Coast Council, Planning Process: centralcoast.tas.gov.au
• Meander Valley Council, Planning Classifications Information Sheet: meander.tas.gov.au
• Huon Valley Council, The Planning Process: huonvalley.tas.gov.au
• Kingborough Council, Planning Scheme: kingborough.tas.gov.au