WA proposes scrapping apartment parking minimums, bigger granny flats
The package, shaped by an advisory panel that includes the Property Council, would also let three-storey apartments rise in R40 zones and redefine height baselines in medium and high-density areas, as the state frames the review around the housing crisis.
Western Australia’s government is weighing a Residential Design Codes overhaul that would scrap minimum parking requirements for apartments and let granny flats grow past the current 70 square metre cap, 7NEWS Perth reported this week. The package has been shaped with input from an advisory panel that includes the Property Council, which first confirmed parts of the proposal earlier this year.
Under the proposal, apartment developments would no longer face a mandated minimum number of car bays, a change the Property Council says the government is considering alongside allowing three-storey builds in R40 zones and redefining baseline heights in medium and high-density areas. None of these changes are in force. They sit at the proposal stage, pending the state government’s final decision on the broader R-Codes review.
Why it matters
A parking minimum sets a floor on construction cost for every apartment project, since each required bay adds basement excavation or above-ground structure that developers must price into a scheme regardless of whether buyers want a car space. Removing that floor would let builders choose parking ratios based on demand, particularly near train stations and high-frequency bus routes where WA already eases ancillary dwelling parking rules. Builders and developers should watch whether the final policy sets any density or location test, similar to the existing ancillary dwelling exemption, rather than a blanket removal.
The granny flat change would go further than the state’s 2024 reform, which removed the need for planning approval on compliant ancillary dwellings up to 70 square metres but kept that size as a hard ceiling. 7NEWS Perth’s report frames the new proposal as allowing bigger granny flats, though the government has not published a revised size figure to replace the existing cap. Any operator relying on the current 70 square metre limit for a secondary dwelling build should treat that number as live until the state confirms a replacement in the formal R-Codes documentation.
The numbers
The current ancillary dwelling exemption caps a compliant granny flat at 70 square metres, measured within the finished wall surfaces, and already waives the parking bay requirement in many locations within 800 metres of a train station or 250 metres of a high-frequency bus route. The proposed apartment parking change would take that minimum to zero, and the R40 height proposal would allow three storeys where some zones currently cap at two. None of these three figures are final; they describe what is on the table, not what has been adopted.
What’s next
The proposal still needs a formal government decision before any of the three changes, apartment parking, R40 height, or a revised granny flat cap, takes effect. Mosman Park’s own planning exemption push remains stuck at the draft stage months after consultation closed, a reminder that even a council-level change can sit unresolved long after an announcement, let alone a statewide R-Codes rewrite with an industry advisory panel attached.
Developers and builders active in R40 zones or planning apartment schemes should track the WA Planning Commission’s own R-Codes consultation material rather than social media coverage for the final parking and height settings, since the size of any revised granny flat cap and the conditions attached to zero-minimum apartment parking will determine whether a given scheme actually gets cheaper to build. Until the state publishes adopted amendments, every current R-Codes parking and height rule stays in force.