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City Manager's Newsletter: Editorial: Plans Approvals
21 May, 2006

While the increased economic development being experienced within eThekwini is great, it brings with it a set of challenges, quickly exposing our own inefficiencies and/or lack of capacity to deal with planning and development.

Over the past five years, the city has experienced some 55-60% general increase in the number of building plan submissions. For example, between July 2003 to December 2003, a total of 7 504 building plans were received whereas in 2004, 9 758 building plans were received for the same period.  Importantly, levels of staffing have hardly increased during this same period.

The increase is due to economic growth, the standardization of tariffs and our increased jurisdiction for which we are the planning authority.  Although the time frame for considering applications is nationally legislated (30 days for first contact where the architectural area is less than 500m², and where the area exceeds 500m², first contact within a period of 60 days), it must be acknowledged that these were legislated in 1977 (some 29 years ago) during which time the built environment challenges (together with the associated legislation) were not as complex as today. Within this context, the eThekwini municipality has initiated discussions with the relevant bodies and other South African cities aimed at reviewing certain aspects of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act.

Nevertheless, the Department is achieving an average of 55% of the stipulated targets depending on the complexity of the applications received and this is not that negative a picture compared to other cities.

Many factors contribute to delays in the assessment and approval of building plans. Firstly, we receive many applications which simply do not meet the minimum submission criteria.  Unfortunately, this means our scarce professional resources spend time checking submissions which should have been checked by the private sector before they were submitted.

Secondly, a significant number of plans are sub-standard.  Once again we have to do the work of plan drawers.  Our technical staff spending 80% of their limited time everyday attending to counter queries as opposed to assessing plans.

Thirdly, there are some dishonest people in the architectural/building design industry and this impacts on what we do.  Some plan drawers bite off more than what they can chew and submit sub-standard plans to buy more time because these get referred (with a long list) back anyway and innocent clients/developers get charged more fees to address “referrals”.  Blame gets shifted to municipal officials who get accused of not knowing what they want.

There are also unresolved land issues, complex legislation, slow internal processes and some problems with our own human resources.

We are taking steps to deal with these issues though consulting the Architectural Council, taking steps to improve the plans submission and approval system, limiting counter times until 1:00 p.m. to ensure all work is dealt with, blacklisting “corrupt” plan drawers, procuring additional plans examination and approval capacity and training up staff, developing an electronic business process management system and reducing the number of staff taking leave to study.

We will continue to take action against those who flout the law and build without the approved plans. We process a minimum of 15000 building applications every year and have no doubt we will be able to rise to the challenges increased economic growth have given to us.