Infrastructure charges in Queensland: who pays for the roads and pipes

In this article

Written by

Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →

A new housing estate needs more than the streets inside it. It needs a wider road to reach it, a water main large enough to supply it, a sewer and a pump station to drain it, and a park within walking distance. Those shared networks cost money long before the first house is finished, and somebody has to pay for them.

In Queensland the first answer is the developer, through an infrastructure charge levied for each new lot or dwelling. The amount is set by the local council within a ceiling fixed by the State. In some areas the State sets the charge itself, and in recent years it has also started paying for some of the works directly.

This guide explains what an infrastructure charge is, what it pays for, who sets it, how high it can go in 2026-27, when it falls due, what a developer can offset against it, how the system differs in State-run development areas, and where State grants now fit in. It describes the framework in general terms. The charge on a particular development depends on the council's own resolution and the conditions of the approval.

Source: Planning (Prescribed Amounts) Amendment Regulation 2026, made 26 June 2026. The caps are maximums; a council may adopt a lower charge.

What an infrastructure charge is

The Queensland Government's planning website describes infrastructure charges as levies imposed by local governments to cover the cost of providing trunk infrastructure when development creates additional demand on existing networks.

Two ideas in that sentence do most of the work.

The first is additional demand. A charge is tied to new load on a network: an extra lot, an extra dwelling, extra floor space. Scenic Rim Regional Council's fact sheet on the subject says charges do not apply to development that creates no additional demand on trunk infrastructure, or where earlier contributions already cover it. Councils' resolutions typically provide for credits for existing lawful uses; Sunshine Coast Council's resolution, for example, sets out credits for existing lawful development and for previous contribution payments.

The second is trunk infrastructure, which is the subject of the next section.

A charge is not a fee for assessing an application and not a rate. It is a one-off capital contribution, levied once for each development, toward networks that the council or water business will build, extend or has already built in anticipation.

Trunk and non-trunk infrastructure

The distinction between trunk and non-trunk infrastructure decides what the charge buys and what the developer still has to build at its own cost.

Trunk infrastructure is the shared, higher-order part of a network. Scenic Rim Regional Council's fact sheet describes it as infrastructure that services multiple development sites and performs a distribution function across an area. The Queensland planning website lists five networks that a council's infrastructure plan can cover:

• water
• sewerage
• transport
• stormwater
• public parks and land for community facilities.

Non-trunk infrastructure is specific to the site: the internal streets of an estate, the pipes that connect each lot to the main, the footpaths and street lighting. It is normally required by a condition of the development approval and paid for by the developer in full, separately from the charge.

A developer therefore pays twice, for two different things. It builds the estate's own infrastructure, and it contributes through the charge to the networks beyond the estate that everyone shares.

The line between the two is sometimes contested, and the framework allows for that. Council resolutions include criteria for converting infrastructure a developer was required to build from non-trunk to trunk. Cairns Regional Council and Sunshine Coast Council both note such criteria in theirs. If the conversion is accepted, the cost can count against the charge.

Who sets the charge

Three documents stand behind every charge.

The first is the council's local government infrastructure plan, known as an LGIP. It forms part of the planning scheme, identifies the trunk infrastructure the council intends to provide, and must be reviewed every five years, according to the Queensland planning website. It is also the gateway to charging: the website states that a local government can levy infrastructure charges only if it has an LGIP in place.

The second is the charges resolution. A council with an LGIP adopts a resolution that sets the charge for each kind of development, and must publish it on its website. A resolution can set different amounts in different parts of the council area. Resolutions are replaced from time to time: Brisbane City Council's current one is Brisbane Infrastructure Charges Resolution (No. 15) 2026, effective 1 July 2026; Sunshine Coast Council's is its Resolution (No. 9) 2022, which commenced on 28 March 2022; Cairns Regional Council's took effect on 11 November 2021.

The third is the infrastructure charges notice. This is the document issued to the applicant with or after a development approval, stating the amount levied for that development and any offset or refund.

In most of Queensland the council levies the whole charge. South East Queensland is different for water. There, the planning website explains, water supply and sewerage charges are set separately by the distributor-retailers through decisions of their boards, and published in documents called water netserv plans. It lists Urban Utilities and Unitywater, together with the City of Gold Coast, Logan City Council and Redland City Council for their own water businesses. A development in Brisbane therefore receives two sets of charges: Brisbane City Council's for transport, parks, land for community facilities and stormwater, and Urban Utilities' for water supply and sewerage.

The prescribed maximum

A council cannot charge what it likes. The Planning Regulation 2017 sets a prescribed amount for each kind of development, and that amount is the maximum a local government or distributor-retailer may adopt, as the State's impact statement on the latest change puts it.

For housing, the cap is expressed for each dwelling and has two levels, by bedroom count. It is indexed each year.

Over the two years shown, the cap for a larger dwelling rose by $3,576.60, or 10.4 per cent. The smaller-dwelling cap is five-sevenths of the larger one in every year.

The same schedule caps charges for other uses. In 2026-27 the regulation sets $244.50 for each square metre of gross floor area for retail, $190.15 for offices and $67.85 for most industry, with a further $13.60 for each square metre of surface impervious to stormwater. Long-term accommodation such as retirement facilities and relocatable home parks carries the same caps as dwellings, and short-term accommodation half of them.

The prescribed amounts bind water businesses as well as councils. The impact statement describes them as the maximum that a local government or a distributor-retailer is allowed to adopt for infrastructure charges.

What councils actually adopt

The cap is a ceiling, and councils decide where to sit under it. Some sit exactly on it.

Bundaberg Regional Council is a clear example. Its Charges Resolution (No. 9) 2026, with a schedule updated for 2026-27, sets $27,163.80 for a dwelling with two or fewer bedrooms and $38,029.25 for one with three or more, which are exactly the State maximums. For subdivision it charges each new lot the amount for a dwelling with three or more bedrooms.

The headline figure is not always what is paid. The same Bundaberg resolution includes a schedule of discounts: reductions of up to 40 per cent by location, and reductions of up to 100 per cent for particular kinds of development, including affordable housing and some small-lot housing. Brisbane City Council lists a 100 per cent reduction for community housing and reduced charges for eligible community organisations, and notes that a temporary 50 per cent reduction for eligible residential development applied to approvals given between 1 September 2023 and 30 June 2025.

Discounts of this kind are a policy choice. A council that reduces a charge still has the infrastructure in its plan, and has to fund the difference from its other revenue.

When the charge is paid

The charge is levied at approval and paid later, at a point that depends on the kind of development. Brisbane City Council and Scenic Rim Regional Council describe the triggers in similar terms.

For a land estate this means the charge is paid when the plan creating the lots is approved, shortly before the lots can be titled and settled with buyers. For an apartment building it falls at the end of construction.

A charge is attached to the land and not only to the applicant. Scenic Rim Regional Council's fact sheet puts it plainly: once levied, charges are recovered in the same manner as rates, from the owner or successors in title. Anyone buying a development site with an existing approval inherits unpaid charges with it.

Some councils offer more time. Cairns Regional Council lists deferred payment of levied charges as an option, along with a waiver for not-for-profit organisations.

How the charge keeps pace with costs

Infrastructure charges are indexed, at two levels.

The State cap is indexed by regulation each year. The impact statement for the 2026 regulation describes the change as routine indexation using the Australian Bureau of Statistics producer price index for road and bridge construction in Queensland.

An individual charge is also indexed between the day it is levied and the day it is paid, which can be years apart on a staged estate. The planning website says councils use the same road and bridge construction index for this automatic increase. Bundaberg Regional Council's resolution applies a three-yearly average of the index. Brisbane City Council says indexation applies to approvals from 23 June 2023 onward, is calculated at the time of payment, and never takes a charge above the State cap.

The practical effect is that the figure on an infrastructure charges notice is a starting amount. The amount paid is the indexed one.

Offsets, refunds and conversions

Sometimes the trunk infrastructure a new estate needs is on the estate's own doorstep, and the simplest course is for the developer to build it. The framework provides for that.

The planning website states that charges can be offset or refunded against trunk infrastructure that a developer provides under a condition of its approval. If the developer is required to build a trunk road or dedicate land for a district park, the value of that contribution is deducted from the charge. That is an offset.

If the value of the trunk works is greater than the charge, the difference comes back. Bundaberg Regional Council's resolution says the council will refund the applicant the difference, and Scenic Rim Regional Council's fact sheet says the local government is required to refund the outstanding amount. Resolutions set out how the value is calculated and when a refund is paid, which may be some time after the works are finished.

Brisbane City Council notes that offsets and refunds are available for trunk items identified in its LGIP. That is the usual boundary: works shown in the infrastructure plan qualify, and for works that are not, the conversion process described earlier is the route.

For large or unusual projects the parties can step outside the standard charge altogether through an infrastructure agreement, a contract between the developer and the council or water business. Scenic Rim Regional Council's fact sheet notes that its standard charges apply except where such agreements exist.

Priority Development Areas use a different system

Everything above describes land under a council's planning scheme. In a Priority Development Area the State's development agency, Economic Development Queensland, is the planning authority, and it sets charges under its own Infrastructure Funding Framework. The current version is dated August 2026 and applies to more than 40 Priority Development Areas.

The framework's charges are built from components. A municipal charge covers trunk infrastructure within the area. A State charge covers serviced land for State community facilities. An implementation charge funds economic and community development programs. A sub-regional charge covers connections to wider networks. Particular areas have additional components for public transport, catalyst infrastructure or value capture.

In the largest greenfield areas the totals are well above the cap that binds councils.

A house lot at Yarrabilba carries $56,407, which is $18,378 more than the council cap. A single dwelling lot at Caloundra South carries $53,000, and an urban terrace lot there $48,766. The comparison is not exact, because the Priority Development Area charge includes components, such as land for State community facilities, that a council charge does not.

The framework also scales charges by dwelling size. At Yarrabilba a small dwelling is charged $37,018, a medium one $47,632 and a large one $56,407.

Waraba shows a charge being assembled. Its interim residential charge is $9,912 a dwelling, made up of a catalyst charge of $6,997, a State charge of $1,749 and an implementation charge of $1,166. The municipal, sub-regional and public transport components are to be determined later through a separate plan.

Payment timing in these areas resembles the council system: on approval of the plan for a subdivision, and for a building before the earliest of building plan approval, the start of the use or the final inspection certificate. State-funded education, healthcare, emergency services and social housing are exempt, and not-for-profit bodies can receive an exemption of up to $150,000 for each approval.

Where State funding comes in

Charges are collected as lots are produced. Trunk infrastructure has to be built before them. That is a timing gap: the main or the treatment plant is paid for first, and the charges that help repay it arrive lot by lot afterwards.

Economic Development Queensland described the scale of the problem in South East Queensland in a July 2025 article, saying 58 per cent of identified greenfield land could not be developed without investment in roads, water and sewerage.

The State's main response is the Residential Activation Fund, a $2 billion program that pays for trunk and essential infrastructure directly. The State Development department's page on the fund says it covers water, stormwater, roads, sewerage, power and telecommunications, that councils and developers can both apply, and that at least 50 per cent of the money is to go outside South East Queensland. As of that page's last update in April 2026, nearly $994 million had been approved.

The second round has been announced region by region since late July. A Queensland Government statement of 18 August put the housing capacity opened by the fund at more than 159,000 homes statewide. Individual grants give a sense of what trunk works cost: more than $80 million for water and sewer infrastructure in Townsville's Upper Ross, and $38 million for road, water and sewer upgrades along 3.6 kilometres of one Bundaberg road.

Inside Priority Development Areas, the agency reports $568 million of infrastructure delivered in 2025-26. The proposed development scheme for Southern Thornlands, in Redland City, lists $544 million of infrastructure for an area planned for about 8,000 dwellings, and Redland City Council has asked the State to commit to funding it in full, according to Inside Local Government.

The fund is described as a way to accelerate infrastructure, not as a replacement for charges. Nothing in its published description alters a council's charges resolution, and the regulation that caps charges was indexed as usual in June.

What a buyer sees of all this

A buyer of a new lot or apartment never receives an infrastructure charges notice. The charge is levied on the developer and paid before or as the lots are titled.

It is still part of what the home costs to produce. At the 2026-27 cap, a three-bedroom house lot in a council area can carry up to $38,029.25 in charges, and a lot in the largest State-run growth areas more than $50,000. How much of that reaches the price a buyer pays, and how much is absorbed in the price the developer paid for the raw land, is a question economists and the industry answer differently, and none of the documents described here settles it.

What the documents do settle is the mechanism. Councils plan the networks and set the charge. The State caps it, indexes it each year, sets its own charges where it is the planning authority, and has begun to fund trunk works directly where charges alone were not bringing land to market. The developer pays the charge, builds the estate's own infrastructure on top of it, and is credited for any shared works it provides. The roads and pipes of a new estate are paid for by all three, at different moments, and the home buyer arrives at the end of that chain.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →