Solutions // Childcare Centre Sites

Should a childcare centre go here?

A site decision memo for childcare centre candidates anywhere in Australia: the childcare applications already lodged around the site from our own tracked council records, the children and families in the catchment and how fast they are growing (ABS Census plus our cohort forecasts), the school run and how parents would actually drop off, then the 19-constraint planning screen read for a sensitive use. Operating childcare locations are mapped from open data; their quality ratings and approved places are not in the memo, and the page says where that gap sits. The filter you run before an option deed, not a substitute for consultants.

Read the sample report Pilot pricing
Sample verdict Hume · VIC
Heavily constrained
No fatal flaws identified
0major
5moderate
19/19assessed
100%data
Read the full sample report →
Re
Childcare Site Decision Memo
Project
Craigieburn childcare site (demo) · Childcare Centre
Site
11, Hamilton Street, Craigieburn, Melbourne, Victoria, 3064, Australia · 1,000 m²
Council / State
Hume · VIC

The First Question

Who lives here, and what is coming.

Before any planning question: the catchment. Every report leads with the ABS Census profile of the suburb, the childcare applications we track around the site, the school run and how a parent would actually reach the front gate. Register quality facts about existing services are not in the memo, and the note below says why.

16,751
children aged 0–14 in the sample suburb
25.7% of 65,178 residents, on a 6.1% a year trend. Census counts for the suburb, not a modelled trade area.

Catchment: Craigieburn (VIC)

  • 65,178 residents, median age 32, growing 6.1% a year (≈ 689 people/yr, high growth)
  • About 16,751 children aged 0–14 (25.7% of the suburb)
  • Median family income $1,855/week, average household 3.3
  • 18,944 dwellings, 89.2% separate houses, 29.2% renting

Distances are straight-line and the demographics are the suburb's Census profile, not a modelled trade area.

Withheld: register quality facts on existing supply

The memo maps childcare locations around the site from the Overture Maps open dataset, but it does not carry their quality ratings or approved places. Those facts come from the national children's services register, whose publisher licences them for non-commercial use only. We have not obtained written consent to redistribute them in a paid report, so they are withheld until we do.

This is a licensing gap, not a finding: it says nothing about how any nearby service rates, and the open location data is thinner than the register, so a short list is not a count of everything operating. Size the existing operating field from the public register yourself, or commission it as part of a demand study. What the memo does cover is the incoming pipeline from our own council application records, the Census demand profile, the school run, access and the 19-constraint planning screen.

Who lives in Craigieburn

25.7%
0-14
13.1%
15-24
35.3%
25-44
19.1%
45-64
6.8%
65+

Age structure, ABS Census. The 0–14 share is the childcare and school pipeline.

Incoming supply

  • No childcare application within 3 km in our tracked records (84 state-wide in 12 months)
  • 1 childcare application(s) tracked across the LGA over 24 months

Our own tracked council records, classified as childcare. Coverage varies by council, so zero means none tracked, not none lodged. This is the pipeline, not the operating field.

The school run

5 primary / combined schools within 2.5 km. These locations describe education access and common travel routes, not school quality, demand or fee tolerance.

  • Our Lady's School · 971 m
  • Craigieburn Secondary College · 1,468 m
  • Craigieburn South Primary School · 1,476 m
  • Craigieburn Primary School · 1,742 m

Verified state education open registers.

How parents drop off

  • Craigieburn station · 652 m
  • 29 bus stops within 1.2 km
  • 45 mapped public parking areas within 1.5 km
  • Craigieburn Community Hospital · 2,033 m; 6 clinics within 3 km
  • 22 parks, 6 playgrounds within 1.2 km

OpenStreetMap at build time; Census says 87.9% of locals drive to work, so drop-off is car-first — the report reads parking and queuing as a contested DA issue, not a footnote.

The Planning Screen

Then the planning screen, on the same real sample.

This is the actual constraint table of the sample report: a residential lot on Hamilton Street, Craigieburn, in Melbourne's northern growth corridor. Two doors away, at 9 Hamilton Street, a childcare centre application (Hume City Council, P26845) is currently before council — same zone, same street, same constraint set. The screen shows what that applicant is navigating: the zone came back General Residential and was read the childcare way, assessable with consent, not a conflict. It held noise and traffic open as the two matters councils actually contest, and picked up the volcanic-plain ecology questions that are real in Craigieburn. It did not flatter the site: five moderates, disclosed as such.

Zoning minor assessed · hit
Cadastral / Title & Easements minor data limited
Planning Overlays minor assessed · hit
Aboriginal Heritage minor assessed · hit
Historic / Federal Heritage insignificant assessed · clean
Bushfire insignificant assessed · clean
Flora & Fauna / Ecology moderate assessed · hit
EPBC / Matters of National Significance moderate assessed · hit
Hydrology / Flooding insignificant assessed · clean
Noise (residential amenity) moderate data limited
Visual Amenity minor assessed · hit
Contours / Topography insignificant assessed · clean
Geotechnical minor data limited
Soils minor data limited
Utilities (power / gas / water / NBN) moderate assessed · hit
Traffic & Access moderate data limited
Contaminated Land insignificant assessed · clean
Air Quality minor assessed · hit
Hazard & Risk (fire / explosion) insignificant assessed · clean
major — potential fatal flaw moderate — needs mitigation minor — readily mitigated insignificant pending — data unavailable, disclosed as such
Site and surrounds satellite exhibit with indicative building footprint
Site & surrounds exhibit
Constraint context map exhibit
Constraint context exhibit
EPBC matters of national environmental significance context exhibit
EPBC context exhibit
Full sample report Sample PDF
And when the answer is no

The same screen, on a lot it refused.

We ran it on a real 3 ha industrial lot on Fitzgerald Road, Laverton North, the kind of cheap fringe land an operator gets offered. The zone came back IN2Z, Industrial 2, where a childcare centre is commonly prohibited, so the screen returned a Major red flag. The catchment said the same thing a different way: about a dozen children under 14 in the whole suburb, an industrial precinct with no families. That is a go / no-go you get for A$490, not after a five-figure feasibility study.

Read the refusal memo →
A proposed childcare site on Fitzgerald Road, Laverton North, marked in rose and ringed by industrial and logistics occupiers inside the 2 km catchment
The real lot, ringed by logistics and industrial occupiers (Overture Maps places) in the Angliss industrial precinct. You can see why the zone says no.

How It Works

Send a site. Get a memo back.

No software to adopt, no seats, no onboarding. It slots in front of your existing consultant workflow as an early filter.

01

Send one candidate site

An address, coordinates or a boundary file. That is all we need to start.

addresscoordinatesKML / GeoJSON
02

We run the desktop screen

19 constraints against state and federal spatial data: zoning, overlays, easements, bushfire, flooding, EPBC, heritage, contamination and more. Ratings are weighted for a childcare use: residential and commercial zones read as the natural pathway, industrial zones as the conflict, noise and traffic held open as the contested matters, and hazard separation read for vulnerable occupants.

statutory referenceschildcare weighting
03

Memo + PDF, fast turnaround

A decision memo in the order a buyer reads: the catchment (suburb demand and growth from the ABS Census, and the incoming childcare applications we track around the site and across the LGA), location and access (nearby school locations, station, buses, parking, health and open space), then the planning pathway with the contested issues in full, approvals plus the NQF licence, a strengths and watch-outs verdict, and a phased action plan. Existing operating supply and its quality ratings are withheld, and the memo states that rather than leaving a blank.

verdictsite risk scorenext steps

Honest by Design

What this screen is, and what it is not.

19
constraints, two fields each
every constraint carries a rating AND a separate data status, so a gap in public data is disclosed as pending, never dressed up as clean

Four things we do not have, said plainly

Register quality facts on existing supply. The memo maps the childcare locations around the site from the Overture Maps open dataset, but their approved places and published quality ratings come from the national children's services register, licensed by its publisher for non-commercial use only. Without written consent to redistribute them in a paid report we withhold them, and the memo says so on the page rather than dressing the gap up. It is a licensing gap, not a finding about the site.

Acoustic and traffic studies. Play-area noise at the neighbouring boundary and drop-off queuing are the two matters childcare DAs are actually fought over, and both need measurement and modelling on the real design. The screen tells you they will be contested and what the interface distances are; it does not produce the acoustic report or the TIA.

Demand modelling and operator economics. The report gives you the Census facts (who lives in the catchment and how fast it is growing) and the applications we track nearby. It does not turn them into a demand model: no utilisation, waitlist, fee or projected-need estimate, and the NQF service approval to operate remains a separate process from planning consent.

The hiring market. The memo gives the workforce backdrop from the Census (residents' qualifications and industry mix), but educator award wages, vacancy competition and which nearby institutions run early-childhood courses are not in our data. The action plan sequences a workforce check with the licence phase; we do not pretend to have done it.

What the screen does close out early, from public data:

  • The zoning verdict: whether the zone family typically allows a centre with consent, or is a genuine conflict
  • Hazard separation, read inward: service stations, dangerous-goods sites, pipelines and contamination history near a vulnerable-occupant use
  • Bushfire and flood exposure: elevated protection and evacuation requirements apply to childcare in bushfire-prone areas, and the screen says when that conversation starts
  • Ecology, heritage and EPBC: the triggers that add seasons to a program (the sample site carries real volcanic-plain grassland questions)
  • Incoming supply: childcare applications near the site and across the LGA from our own tracked council records, the pipeline no register shows
  • The school run and access: nearby school locations and register-published type/sector details from verified state education open data, plus station, bus, parking, health and open-space facts (OpenStreetMap) and how locals actually travel (Census journey to work)
  • Catchment demographics: population, children 0–14, growth trend, family income, house prices, household size and dwelling mix from the ABS Census profile of the suburb
  • DA precedent volume: 6,518 childcare-related applications tracked across our national database, so the memo can say how active the LGA actually is

Coverage varies by state and the report says so per constraint: Victorian screens run with full layer coverage; in NSW the Aboriginal heritage register is access restricted and council flood mapping is partial, so those constraints are reported pending there, not assumed clear. This is a preliminary desktop screen to support early site selection; it is not planning advice, and it does not replace the specialist assessments a development application requires.

Field Guides

The homework, published.

The research behind this screen is free to read. Every guide below is built on our national development application database.

849,000+ development applications tracked, refreshed daily
360+ councils covered, across every state and territory
8/8 states and territories live, not a single-state pilot

Every screen runs on the same live planning-data engine behind daleads.com.au, built and run by Bo Wang, a Monash-trained developer working in Australian PropTech.

No inflated case studies, no borrowed logos. The sample report on this page is a real screen you can read end to end, pending items and all.

Pricing

Priced like a filter, not a study.

A consultant desktop constraints study typically runs to five figures and takes weeks. This screen exists so you only commission those for sites that survive the first cut.

Pilot

A$490 / site + GST
  • One real candidate site, any state
  • Full memo + PDF, satellite exhibits
  • Delivered fast, once scope is confirmed
  • No subscription, no further commitment

10-site credit pack

A$3,650 + GST
  • Screen a shortlist or an acquisition pipeline
  • Ranked side-by-side comparison across sites
  • Credits valid 12 months
  • Priority turnaround

Constraints that cannot be assessed from public data are disclosed as pending, never padded. If the screen returns materially less than the sample report shows for your state, we will say so before you pay.

Free instant teaser

Try it on your address first.

Type a candidate address and get a free sliver of the screen in seconds, straight from the same live database the paid report runs on: the planning zone at the point, development application activity around it, and what has been lodged nearby. The full 19-constraint screen with verdict and statutory references is the paid report.

Request the full screen

We'll get back to you as soon as we can with a sample section and confirmation. No payment now: we confirm scope first, then invoice at A$490 per site + GST.

Enter the site address in the box above.

7-day guarantee: if the report does not help you make the call, tell us within 7 days of delivery and we refund the full fee.

Prefer email? [email protected]

Have a shortlist?

Send one real candidate site.

Run the free teaser on your address, then request the screen. We reply with a sample section and scope confirmation as soon as we can.

Check your address free Read the sample first