South East Queensland Selling, Home Business & Farm-Stay Rules, by Council
Unlike NSW and Victoria, Queensland has no single statewide home business exemption or farm-stay code (see the state-wide QLD article for the full framework) — each council's own planning scheme sets its own thresholds. This page covers what's actually documented for each SEQ council. Looking for a council outside SEQ? See the Regional Queensland selling, home business & farm-stay rules by council page.
Councils with a documented approach: Scenic Rim, Brisbane, Redland, Sunshine Coast
Scenic Rim Regional Council folds bed and breakfast and farm-stay accommodation directly into its own "Home based business" definition and code, rather than treating farm tourism as a separate accommodation use category — a distinctly different structure from councils that assess the two separately.
Brisbane, Redland, and Sunshine Coast councils each publish their own home-based business acceptable-outcomes checklist under their respective City Plan or planning scheme, covering scale, residential amenity, traffic and parking impacts — but none publish a single simple numeric threshold in the way NSW's 2-employee Codes SEPP exemption does. The practical upshot: a home business or farm-stay proposal that would clearly qualify for exemption in NSW may still need a specific assessment against your council's own acceptable-outcomes criteria in Queensland.
Source: Scenic Rim, Brisbane, Redland and Sunshine Coast planning schemes
Other SEQ councils: Gold Coast, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan, Lockyer Valley
These councils each assess home business and farm-stay/short-term accommodation proposals under their own planning scheme's home-based business or tourist accommodation provisions, consistent with Queensland's council-by-council approach, but a documented public breakdown of their specific numeric thresholds wasn't available at time of writing. Lockyer Valley, being the most rural of this group, is the council where a genuine farm-stay or agritourism proposal is most likely to need to engage directly with the planning scheme's rural zone provisions rather than a straightforward home-business pathway.
Source: Gold Coast, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan and Lockyer Valley planning schemes
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Queensland set one statewide home business exemption like NSW or Victoria?
No. Queensland leaves the specific thresholds to each council's own planning scheme, so what counts as an exempt home-based business actually differs from one SEQ council to the next - there's no single statewide clause to point to.
Does Scenic Rim have its own farm-stay rules?
Yes. Scenic Rim Regional Council folds bed and breakfast and farm-stay accommodation into its own "Home based business" definition and code, rather than treating it as a separate accommodation use category.
Can one food business licence cover multiple SEQ councils?
Generally no. Unlike Victoria's statewide FoodTrader system, Queensland typically requires a separate food business licence with each council area a temporary or mobile food business trades in - this applies uniformly across every SEQ council, not just some.