Minister approves Bunbury rezoning from residential to mixed-use

The Minister for Planning has approved Amendment No. 17 to the City of Bunbury Local Planning Scheme, rezoning five lots on Albert Road from Residential R20/30 to Mixed Use-Residential R60, the council confirmed in a public notice this week. The Minister signed off the change on 30 October 2026 and it was published the same day in the Government Gazette under section 87 of the Planning and Development Act 2005.

For a Bunbury developer or builder, the shift is immediate: the Albert Road land can now support a wider range of commercial and residential uses side by side, and the jump to an R60 density code allows considerably more dwellings on the same footprint than the previous R20/30 residential coding permitted.

Why it matters

The amendment covers Lots 15, 16, 17, 42 and 100 Albert Road, Bunbury, a cluster of five titles that the City of Bunbury has now formally shifted out of a purely residential zoning. Mixed Use-Residential zoning lets a site carry retail, commercial or office floorspace alongside housing, which is a materially different development proposition to a standard residential lot. Pairing that zoning change with an R60 code, up from R20/30, doubles the top density the scheme allows on the land, from R30 to R60, before any individual development application is lodged. The density code itself sits within the state’s wider Residential Design Codes, which the WAPC has separately opened for a rewrite covering lot size, setbacks and height. This is a decided scheme change, not a proposal: the Minister’s approval and the Gazette notice are the final step in the amendment process, and the zoning now in force is Mixed Use-Residential R60.

The numbers

Five lots are rezoned under the amendment: 15, 16, 17, 42 and 100 Albert Road, Bunbury. The density code lifts from R20/30 to R60. The Minister approved the amendment on 30 October 2026, with Gazette publication the same day; the City of Bunbury’s public notice followed on 2 November 2026. The notice does not state a combined site area, and no applicant is named in the council’s published notice.

What’s next

With the amendment gazetted, the new Mixed Use-Residential R60 zoning is already in force for the five Albert Road lots, so any future development application on the site will be assessed against the new code rather than the old residential coding. The City of Bunbury’s planning department is fielding enquiries on the change, and the full decision text sits in the Government Gazette on the WA State Legislation website. The Australian Developer will follow up if a development application is lodged on the rezoned land.