Johannesburg to improve building application times
Property developers are putting Johannesburg under a lot of pressure to improve its turnaround time for building and rezoning applications as some were apparently kept waiting for up to four years for development approvals.
Johannesburg now plans to approve 60% of building applications within 24 hours. Some developers started taking legal - action desperate to speed up the approval process. City of Johannesburg planning chief for urban development Prof Philip Harrison said that from September a new customer service centre, the Metro Link Centre, would make it possible to process two-thirds of building applications in 24 hours. Up to 70% of plans could be approved within 28 days.
Johannesburg has a 9% growth target, and to achieve and maintain this goal, Harrison said that improvements to the city’s development planning and urban management systems were essential. The city approves 22000 building plans annually, worth R5bn a year, and receives 6000 township planning applications – an increase of 6% a year.
Urban development aims to see approval for rezoning applications taking nine months instead of a year. Township approval will still take nine months and consents five months on average.
Sapoa had been requesting a meeting with the city for a year to address issues with town planning. Director of development management for the department, Tiaan Ehlers, said that the department needed to improve its image and that they have been criticised for being unapproachable, because they were only available at certain times of the day and that the help desk is intended to improve service.
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