Council growth forecasting: the missing system in your technology stack
Councils have systems for rates, GIS, development applications and contributions. None of them is built to produce the growth forecast they all depend on.
Walk through the systems of any growing council and you will find the same core set, whether brand new or long overdue for replacement. Property and rating records what exists on every parcel today. Corporate GIS publishes zones, overlays and cadastre. The development assessment system administers applications. The contributions system collects charges and funds new infrastructure. Each has a clear job and someone responsible for it.
Now ask a different question. Which system produces the growth forecast?
In most councils, the answer is none of them. Yet that forecast sits underneath nearly every major spending decision the organisation makes: how many dwellings, residents and jobs are coming, on which parcels, and in which year. It is the number every other system relies on, and it is the only one without a home.
A KEY INSIGHT No council would run its finance function on a spreadsheet nobody maintains. Many still run their growth assumptions that way, even though those assumptions underpin hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure spending. |
How councils handle growth forecasting today
Without a dedicated system, councils patch the gap in one of three ways.
The external consultant study. It is defensible on the day it is delivered, typically costs $75,000 to $200,000, and takes months. It starts ageing before it is even adopted, because every rezoning, approval and policy change moves the ground underneath it. The next review means a new brief.
Internal manual work. A planner or spatial analyst pulls data by hand from GIS, rating records and state targets into a spreadsheet. It works until that person moves on and the method leaves with them.
Borrowed projections. State projections and demographic profiling services give a useful top-down or suburb-level picture. They were never designed to sequence individual parcels or to convert directly into infrastructure network demand and contribution revenue.
None of these is a bad tool. Each simply answers a different question from the one a capital works program needs answered: which parcel, how much development, and in which year.
Why the gap matters more now
Under the National Housing Accord, Australian governments committed to 1.2 million new, well-located homes over the five years to June 2029 [1]. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council expects the country to fall short of that target within the Accord period [2]. States have pushed the pressure down to individual councils. In New South Wales alone, 43 councils now hold five-year housing completion targets [3].
Growth assumptions are now tested more often, and by more parties: state agencies, the development industry, auditors, grant assessors and sometimes tribunals. A forecast rebuilt every few years cannot keep pace with a policy environment that shifts every few months.
What the missing system does
Forecaz is built to sit in that gap. It does not replace any system a council already runs. It connects them.
Forecaz takes rating data, GIS layers, planning scheme controls and development approval activity, converts them into a single parcel-level forecast of what will be built, where and when, and sends the forecasts back to the systems that need them.
Property and rating tells you what exists on a parcel now. Forecaz tells you what will exist there, and when.
Corporate GIS publishes the forecast as a spatial layer. Forecaz produces it.
Your contributions system collects charges once a plan is adopted. Forecaz produces the evidence that justifies the charge schedule and defends it under review.
Your development assessment system records approvals. Forecaz loads that activity to give a near-term pipeline view no public dataset provides.
Under the hood, Forecaz uses machine learning to weigh what actually drives development, including site size, zoning, existing approvals and distance to services, into a single score for every parcel. It then sequences growth year by year against population and floor space targets. Your planners set the assumptions; the model does the heavy lifting. It runs continuously as a live evidence base, so new scenarios run internally in hours or days, not through a fresh consultant brief.
What going without it really costs
The consultant fee saving is real, but it is the smallest number in the room. The larger costs of an unmaintained forecast never appear on an invoice. They show up as contribution revenue that arrives late or falls short, infrastructure built too early or too late, charge schedules that are harder to defend under challenge, grant applications that miss short deadlines, and strategy reviews that queue behind consultant availability.
For a growing council with a capital program in the hundreds of millions, that exposure is measured in millions, not thousands. It changes the decision from “should we fund a growth forecasting platform?” to “can we afford to keep going without one?”
Proven in growing councils
City of Gold Coast, Australia’s second-largest local government area, with around 681,000 residents, used Forecaz at the core of its Planning and Urban Growth (PUG) model to build the evidence base for its Local Government Infrastructure Plan.
City of Moreton Bay, one of Queensland’s fastest-growing council areas, uses Forecaz to model new growth corridors and established urban infill within a single model.
Toowoomba Region models its established city, growth suburbs, rural towns and agricultural land in one platform, confirming 15 to 20 years of consolidation supply for its Growth Plan.
Across these deployments, Forecaz reports that a full demand forecasting cycle, which once took six to nine months, now takes five to seven days. Once the model is in place, new scenarios can be compared internally in hours to days, rather than through a fresh consultant study. Results for any individual council depend on its starting data and profile.
The question worth asking internally
The question is not whether your council needs a growth forecast. Every council already has one in some form. The question is whether that forecast is a system your planning and infrastructure teams own, maintain and can defend at short notice, or a project that gets redone every few years and goes stale in between.
Forecaz VIC for Victorian Councils
Forecaz VIC is an urban growth modelling platform set up for Victorian councils.
The platform arrives pre-loaded with:
Precinct Structure Plans
Victorian Planning Authority growth projections
Planning scheme settings, and
Land use data for your LGA
Council planners run real scenarios within weeks. No data scientists, no long onboarding, and no rebuilding assumptions from scratch each time policy shifts.
Forecaz VIC uses AI-powered Bayesian Network modelling
The model assigns a development propensity to every land parcel, based on proximity to infrastructure, development yield, current land use, and local constraints. Growth follows realistic paths across projection years you define.
The Forecaz VIC platform produces parcel-level forecasts for:
dwellings
population
gross floor area, and
employment.
The platform also produces unlimited scenario comparisons that can spatially viewed in the map explorer.
When Councils load their own development permits into the model, each council instance gains a near-term pipeline view no public dataset offers on its own.
Forecaz appears on the MAV AI Procurement Register
Every vendor on the Municipal Association of Victoria's (MAV) AI Procurement Register meets the AI Vendor Evaluation Criteria, covering ethics, governance, data security, regulatory compliance, and implementation support.
To discuss the procurement path for your council contact Annette Henry.
Arrange a discovery session today
Discover how quickly Forecaz VIC can be configured for your LGA
Call Annette Henry (0418 123 133), Bradley Rasmussen (0419 738 378) or book below:
Sources and References:
1. The Treasury (Australian Government), Delivering the National Housing Accord, treasury.gov.au/policy-topics/housing/accord.
2. National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, State of the Housing System 2026, nhsac.gov.au/news/state-housing-system-2026.
3. NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Housing targets, planning.nsw.gov.au/housing-targets.
Legal Disclaimer:
This article discusses the general operating context for Australian local government based on publicly available information current at the time of publication. It does not constitute legal, financial, or planning advice. Housing Accord and state target figures are drawn from the cited public sources and are subject to revision. Performance figures are Forecaz-reported indicative benchmarks; outcomes for any council depend on its data and circumstances. Councils should seek independent advice on their own obligations.