Two councils have built the most documented pathways in the country for a permanent home on wheels. Both were written to expire.

On 13 December, the Surf Coast Shire pilot for tiny houses on wheels reaches the date it was written to stop. Every permit issued under it expires that day, because that is what the permits say.

The pilot opened on 13 December 2023. Successful applicants receive a Temporary Residence permit under the shire’s Community Amenity Local Law 2021, valid until 13 December 2026. The permit is not transferable. It attaches to the occupant for the duration of the pilot.

Council’s own guidance does not dance around it. Its published questions and answers include one asking why anyone should invest in a tiny house on wheels when there is no guarantee they will be allowed after the pilot. The answer acknowledges the purchase is a significant investment for a pilot not guaranteed beyond December 2026.

It is an unusually honest thing for a council document to say, and the clearest description available of what this market currently is.

The pilot was assembled out of local law, because planning law had nothing to offer

The mechanics matter, because they explain why these pathways are so fragile.

Surf Coast built its pilot out of a local law rather than the planning scheme. It applies only where no planning permit is required, assessed case by case, and excludes land in floodway, inundation and salinity overlays, and in the Bushfire Management Overlay unless it sits within township settlement boundaries.

One condition does more work than any other. The tiny house must remain on its trailer base for the duration of the pilot. Council explains why in its own guidance: taking it off the wheels would trigger the planning scheme provisions for building and works, which would require a planning permit and end the exemption the pilot depends on.

There is no building permit. In its place the pilot sets minimum standards, including construction to the relevant Bushfire Attack Level where the land is bushfire prone, smoke alarms, and compliance certificates from a licensed plumber and electrician.

Shellharbour has just started its own version of the same experiment

On 7 September, Shellharbour City Council opened a two year pilot in New South Wales, which it describes as the first initiative of its kind in local government in that state.

It runs on two instruments rather than one. A local clause inserted into Schedule 2 of the Shellharbour Local Environmental Plan 2013 makes an eligible mobile tiny home exempt development when used as a secondary dwelling, which removes the development application. A Local Approvals Policy sets the criteria for the installation approval under section 68 of the Local Government Act.

The eligibility rules are tighter than the Victorian ones. The dwelling must be registrable, capped at 12.5 metres long as a motor vehicle or 12.3 metres as a trailer, 2.5 metres wide and 4.3 metres high. It must go on residential zoned land in a Torrens allotment with an existing dwelling house, clear of flood, heritage, environmental and contamination constraints. Manufactured and relocatable homes are excluded, as is short term rental accommodation.

Development contributions are not payable during the trial, on the reasoning that a two year permission creates no permanent pressure on infrastructure and that contributions cannot be levied without a development application anyway. Council will consider whether to continue, change or cease the program within 18 months of commencement.

A pilot is a permission, not a category

A planning category is a class of development that exists in an instrument until someone amends it. A pilot is a time limited permission under a local instrument, with an expiry date written in from the start. Both of these pilots work by suspending an approval requirement for a set period rather than by creating a form of housing the law recognises. When the period ends, the permission ends with it, and the dwelling reverts to whatever the underlying law always said about it.

The two pilots cannot agree on what a tiny house is

Put the eligibility rules side by side and the definitions contradict each other.

Surf Coast defines a tiny house on wheels as a dwelling registered or required to be registered under the Road Safety Act 1986, and expressly excludes caravans, wagons and vans as recreational registrable vehicles. A caravan is not a tiny house.

Shellharbour applies its pilot to a campervan or caravan capable of being registered as a motor vehicle or trailer. A caravan is exactly the thing the pilot covers.

Meanwhile, in the Land and Environment Court this month, a tiny home on the New South Wales far south coast succeeded on the argument that it was a caravan, and still lost the case on the use of the land.

Same product. Three different legal characterisations in the same country in the same year.

In one pilot a caravan is the thing that qualifies. In the other it is the thing that disqualifies.

What happens to the people living in them

Surf Coast has committed to preparing a report with a recommendation on whether tiny houses on wheels can be a safe and legal way to increase housing options, to go to a council meeting before the pilot period ends. Council has also said it will work with owners toward the end of the pilot on the way forward. Its published guidance still says the outcome of the pilot cannot be assumed in advance.

Shellharbour has written its landing more explicitly. At expiry, applicants get a 90 day grace period to lodge for the approvals needed to keep using the dwelling as rental accommodation, or to cease that use. Owners can fall back on the scenarios in clause 77 of the moveable dwellings regulation that require no council approval. The relevant one covers a single caravan on land occupied by the caravan’s owner in connection with that owner’s dwelling house, lived in only by the owner or members of that household. Continuing to lease to a member of the public would need a development application.

Read that carefully and the fallback is the point. If the trial ends, a renter has no pathway. A family member does.

Manufacturers are being asked to build product for a market that runs on resolutions

The two schemes do not share a specification. Surf Coast sets no size limit and leaves it to transportability and registration. Shellharbour imposes hard dimensional caps. Surf Coast excludes caravans by definition. Shellharbour requires the dwelling to be one. A unit built to satisfy one pilot may be ineligible for the other, and nothing carries across to a council that has not run a pilot at all.

There is no transferable certification because there is no standard to certify against. What a manufacturer can sell is compliance with a particular council’s resolution, for as long as it lasts. That is a difficult basis for investing in tooling, staff or volume.

The state frameworks are moving in a different direction

Neither state has generalised what its councils are learning.

In New South Wales, the planning department finalised the Shellharbour amendment, which means the state enabled one council to run one experiment on its own land use map. The Housing SEPP still handles moveable dwellings principally through caravan parks and manufactured home estates, and the new Building Act, assented in August, creates a framework for prefabricated buildings while stating that a moveable dwelling is not one.

In Victoria, the reform that mattered went to fixed dwellings. Amendment VC253, approved in December 2023 and noted by Surf Coast in its own pilot guidance, introduced a small second dwelling land use term into the Victoria Planning Provisions and every planning scheme in the state. It is not a pathway for a dwelling on a trailer.

Other councils in Western Australia and Victoria have adjusted local policies and permit requirements around tiny houses. But these two pilots remain the most fully documented pathways for permanent occupation of a home on wheels anywhere in the country, and both were designed with a stop date.

The evidence these trials are producing is the most valuable thing in the argument

Both councils are collecting evidence nobody else has. Surf Coast is inspecting dwellings, surveying residents, host landowners and neighbours at the start, midpoint and end, and keeping a register of complaints. Shellharbour is registering every approval so the trial can be monitored and evaluated.

That is three years of operating data in one shire and two years coming in another, on amenity, wastewater, neighbour response, and whether the predicted problems materialised.

If the Surf Coast pilot lapses without a decision, the evidence does not disappear, but the thing it was gathered to inform does. The next council to try this starts where the last one started.

The date to watch is 13 December. Not because tiny houses hinge on one Victorian shire, but because a council is about to answer the question its own trial was built to ask, with people living inside the answer.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Modular, container, tiny home, duplex: the shift in what Australians want to build
• NSW Passes New Building Act 2026: construction certificates are on the way out
• Australian Construction Industry Trends Guide

Last updated: 14 September 2026.

General information only. This article is general industry commentary and does not constitute legal, financial or regulatory advice. Builders and construction professionals should seek independent professional advice about how planning and building legislation applies to their circumstances.

Author: TGB Editorial