Alderman Norton lives on a bush block near Lilydale and said soon after the Victorian bushfire in February his house would probably not survive a similar fire and many others faced the same problem.

So he began preparing his property for fire and asked council general manager Frank Dixon for an investigation aimed at reducing planning red tape inhibiting fire preparedness.

But Alderman Norton said he was still waiting for a reply more than three months later and the urgency among rural households for fire preparation seemed to have evaporated.

Mr Dixon said the council would get a briefing within the next three to four months.

Alderman Norton said he recently toured rural areas of the municipality and saw many houses which could burn in a big fire, because of a lack of preparation.

Alderman Norton said he felt safer after clearing ground cover and back-burning and was buying more sprinklers and water pumps and building a fire bunker.

He said winter was the best time for preparations and it was too late to burn off in summer, but little seemed to be happening.

"It should almost be mandatory that fire-prone trees be cleared within a certain radius and replaced with fire-retardant trees," Alderman Norton said.

"We should be making it easy for people to be fire-ready.

"There are an awful lot of potential hazards out there."

Alderman Norton said it was important planning requirements were easily understood and uniform.

He said differing land use classifications in his area meant some land owners could virtually clearfell their land at will while others needed permission to undertake minor clearing.

Alderman Norton said he planned to build a fire bunker near his house but there were big differences in planning regulations depending on whether he buried a water tank to use as a bunker or dug a hole and constructed a bunker from scratch.

All these complexities could discourage people from improving their properties, Alderman Norton said.