General information, not legal advice. In Victoria the Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria’s fencing pages on vic.gov.au are the official place to check, and CFA for clearing in bushfire areas; in Queensland, Business Queensland and the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. All are listed at the foot of this page.
Five steps before a Victorian fence goes up
The Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria sets out an order for replacing, repairing or building a boundary fence.
- Find the owner next door. Renters generally do not pay, so it is the owner who matters. The centre suggests asking a tenant for the owner’s or property manager’s details, asking the council’s rates area, or running a title search through LANDATA, for which fees apply.
- Talk it through. If the two owners agree on a plan, no further formal steps are needed.
- Send quotes with a Fencing Notice. The notice is the formal proposal: it sets out the work, the line it follows and what each owner should pay. It is needed if the matter ever reaches court, and the centre suggests registered post so there is proof of the day it arrived.
- Wait 30 days. The neighbour has 30 days from receiving the notice to respond. If there is no reply in that time, the work can start without their agreement, and their share can be pursued in the Magistrates’ Court.
- If there is still no agreement, apply for an order. In Victoria only magistrates decide fencing matters: whether work is needed, by when, and who pays what. The centre recommends direct discussion first, since a court order costs time and money.
Work done without the neighbour’s agreement or the legal process, the centre warns, leaves the neighbour with no legal obligation to pay anything. Owners who simply sign an agreed quote can do so, but without a Fencing Notice any later dispute is settled under contract law, not the Fences Act.
What “sufficient” means
Victorian law does not fix a height or a material. Neighbours contribute equally to a “sufficient dividing fence”, judged by things such as the style of any existing fence, how each owner uses the land, reasonable privacy and security, and the kinds of fences nearby. For rural land, the centre’s example of a sufficient fence is a wire and post fence.
Three refinements follow. An owner who wants something better than sufficient, higher or in dearer materials, pays the difference unless both agree to share it. An owner who damages the fence deliberately or negligently pays for the repair. And the shared cost can reach past the fence itself, to clearing the ground for it and to having the land surveyed to find the common boundary.
The edges of the Victorian rules
| Situation | What the page says |
|---|---|
| The fence is not on the boundary | Both neighbours keep the same rights and obligations for a dividing fence even when it does not sit on the common boundary. |
| A wall on the boundary | Building and protection work on a building at the boundary is not fencing work and generally falls under the Building Act 1993 instead. |
Clearing along the fence in bushfire country
CFA’s fence line rule applies to boundary fences in areas designated bushfire prone under the Building Act 1993, which include land in the Bushfire Management Overlay. What it allows depends on when the fence was built.
- Fence built before 10 September 2009: owners and residents may clear vegetation along the existing boundary fence to a combined width of up to 4 metres across both sides.
- Fence built after 10 September 2009: a planning permit is likely to be needed, and CFA points owners to the council.
| Already cleared on the neighbour’s side | May be cleared on this side |
|---|---|
| Up to 1 metre | Up to 3 metres |
| Up to 2 metres | Up to 2 metres |
| 4 metres or more | Up to 1 metre |
Anything beyond those widths would likely need a permit, CFA says, and clearing on the neighbour’s side of the fence needs their written permission first. Native vegetation can be protected by other laws as well, which is Peg D, native vegetation.
Queensland
Business Queensland says that to find out whether a fence is built along the common boundary, a registered cadastral surveyor carries out an identification survey, and that dividing fence matters are governed by the Neighbourhood Disputes (Dividing Fences and Trees) Act 2011. Where adjoining owners disagree about building or maintaining a fence, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal deals with the dispute.
The tribunal also keeps a tree orders register: a record of orders affecting land made under that Act, including who must carry out each order and by when.
How a surveyor fixes the line itself is Peg A, boundaries and surveys.