Pool Inspections in
Batesford, Victoria

The standard is the same whatever the planning map says, but an overlay can change where we look harder and what a repair involves. Batesford has land subject to inundation and floodway overlays, with bushfire, environmental significance and significant landscape overlays on parts of the locality. They don't cover every lot, so check the planning map for your own property rather than assuming.

On low ground near the river we check whether posts have been pushed out of line. On treed blocks it's whatever has grown up against the fence: an overhanging branch or a thick shrub at the base can give a child a way over.

There are also 14 heritage overlay areas here. On a property inside one, a replacement fence can need a planning permit. We write up the defect and the permit is yours to arrange, so ring council before you order any fencing.

We also inspect next door in Bell Post Hill and Hamlyn Heights. There's a page for barrier inspections around Bell Park too. Council's lodgement steps are in the council process for Greater Geelong. Before we arrive, try the gate self-close test; it takes two minutes.

Anakie is close by as well. The same booking and price apply in Lovely Banks.

At the fence, walls and gates that close off the pool. Nothing past that line is part of the inspection. A farm dam or water tank isn't a pool, so it isn't checked and the Form 23 doesn't cover it.

Zoning here is a mix of farming, rural living, low density residential and township zones, and lot sizes follow suit. On the bigger blocks the pool normally has its own fence or wall, well inside the boundary. A smaller township lot may use part of a boundary fence as one side of the barrier, and when it does, that stretch is inspected along with the rest.

Most pools here belong to one house on its own lot: the 2021 Census counted 354 private dwellings, nearly all separate houses. Shared pools and owners corporations hardly come into it. There is also some land zoned for urban growth, and a pool built new on any of it is certified by the surveyor on the building permit, not by us.

Before the visit, walk the line and shift anything a child could step up on: a raised garden bed, a stack of pavers, a pot pushed against the fence, a low branch reaching across. Most take minutes to move, and moving them first can turn a fail into a pass.