The First Question

Who is already here, and who is coming.

Before any planning question: the competition and the catchment. Every report leads with the ACECQA register (every approved service near the site, rated, with places) and the ABS Census profile of the suburb. On the sample site the screen found a heavily supplied catchment, and said so.

approved services within 2.0 km of the sample site

holding 1,339 approved places, the nearest 287 m away. NQS mix: 3 Exceeding NQS, 16 Meeting NQS, 1 Working Towards NQS, 1 Not yet rated. ≈ 12.5 children (0–14) per approved place

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. The ratio compares sites; it is not a utilisation claim.

NQS ratings within 2 km

Exceeding

Meeting

Working Towards

Not yet rated

Overall NQS rating of each approved service, ACECQA register.

Competition by distance

0-500m

500m-1km

1-1.5km

1.5-2km

Approved services per straight-line distance band from the candidate site.

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.

Existing service	Suburb	Distance	Overall NQS rating	Approved places
Hilton Street Preschool	Craigieburn	287 m	Exceeding NQS	33
Early Foundation Childcare Craigieburn	Craigieburn	416 m	Not yet rated	80
Where We Grow ELC Craigieburn	Craigieburn	521 m	Meeting NQS	92
Craigieburn Early Childhood Services Centre	Craigieburn	658 m	Meeting NQS	75
Craigieburn Leisure Centre Creche	Craigieburn	659 m	Meeting NQS	47
Busy Bees at Craigieburn	Craigieburn	695 m	Meeting NQS	102
Camp Australia - Our Lady's Primary School - Craigieburn OSHC	Craigieburn	987 m	Meeting NQS	40
325 Early Education Craigieburn	Craigieburn	1161 m	Meeting NQS	38

The school run

5 primary / combined schools within 2.5 km holding 2,674 enrolments — families already drive past this site daily.

Our Lady's School · 971 m · 703 enrolled
Craigieburn Secondary College · 1,468 m · 1,008 enrolled
Craigieburn South Primary School · 1,476 m · 545 enrolled
Craigieburn Primary School · 1,742 m · 458 enrolled

ACARA school profiles; ICSEA percentile mean 36 = fee-point context.

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.

Incoming supply & the local bar

No childcare application within 3 km in our tracked records (84 state-wide in 12 months)
3 services rated Exceeding NQS in the radius: Hilton Street Preschool, Bank Street Preschool, Willmott Park P.S. Out of School Hours Care
1 rated Working Towards: where the local bar is beatable

Application counts are our tracked records; coverage varies by council, so zero means none tracked, not none lodged. Ratings are ACECQA's, quoted as-is.

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, on the same street as a live childcare centre application currently before Hume City Council. The zone came back General Residential and was read the childcare way: assessable with consent, not a conflict. The screen 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

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.

Send one candidate site

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

addresscoordinatesKML / GeoJSON

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

Memo + PDF within one business day

A decision memo in the order a buyer reads: the catchment decision (every nearby service with NQS ratings, who rates above and below the standard and on which quality areas, incoming applications from our own records, suburb demand and growth), location and access (the school run with ICSEA and enrolments, 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.

verdictsite risk scorenext steps

Honest by Design

What this screen is, and what it is not.

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

Three things we do not have, said plainly

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 register facts (who operates nearby, rated how, with how many places) and the Census facts (who lives in the catchment). 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)
Existing services, their NQS standing and where the local bar dips: every approved service within 2 km with overall rating and places, plus who rates Exceeding and who rates Working Towards (and on which quality areas), from the ACECQA register
Incoming supply: childcare applications near the site and across the LGA from our own tracked records — the pipeline the register cannot show
The school run and access: nearby schools with ICSEA and enrolments (ACARA), 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.

1,523 childcare DAs in 12 months: where operators are building, and how long approval really takes
The QA7 governance bottleneck: what holds operators back after the doors open
The DA map: browse live childcare applications with zoning and overlay layers

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$1,000 / site + GST

One real candidate site, any state
Full memo + PDF, satellite exhibits
Delivered within one business day
No subscription, no further commitment

10-site credit pack

A$7,500 + 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.

Should a childcare centre go here?