SAVE Our Berea (SOB) has always believed that the best actions and decisions for the area’s future are those guided by broad community considerations and a long-term perspective rather than short-term developments that forever alter the unique character of the Berea and benefit only a few.
With this in mind, and following SOB’s increasingly concern about the continuing threat of inappropriate and illegal buildings currently being erected on the Berea, and after receiving a plethora of complaints from residents regarding new developments that were negatively affecting their properties, a meeting was held on Tuesday, 14 November at City Engineering.
READ RELATED: Problem buildings: SOB calls for urgent meeting with building inspectorate
“We sent Land Use Management a request for an urgent meeting so that residents could meet the relevant officials face to face and present their cases. We have always considered ourselves a lobby group dedicated to building an interface between the residents of the Berea and officials in eThekwini Council, so we were pleased when Deputy Head of Town Planning, Musa Mbhele responded positively and agreed to facilitate,” said Cheryl Johnson and Kevin Dunkley from SOB.
The meeting was attended by various Land Use Management (LUM) heads of department, ward 31 councillor Chris Pappas, City Heritage Architect Frank Reitz, Amafa’s Ros Devereux and was chaired by Kevin Dunkley.
“Residents were able to finally meet the officials they had been corresponding with for months, to voice their concerns and frustrations and to hand over documents supporting their cases for Land Use Management to investigate,” they said.
Many of the residents’ concerns were related to approval processes, the need for neighbours’ consent, building irregularities, protecting property values, LUMS enforcement and issues to do with the specifics of basements. Residents were concerned that the developments on the Berea were compromising their property values and living conditions.
READ RELATED: War on town planning issues not over, say civic activists
The department noted all the concerns of the residents present at the meeting and asked that they be given a week to collect all the relevant information so that they could respond from an informed point of view as well as get feedback from other departments where necessary.
Commenting on the meeting, Councillor Chris Pappas said:
“The meeting produced a clear picture of unlawful and irregular development happening on the Berea. The meeting also hinted at a lack of capacity by the department to deal with the great number of violations taking place. Development is good. The evolution of an area is inevitable, especially so close to the CBD, however, it must be managed so that new and old property owners are happy.”
He said it must be ensured that all town planning requirements and building plans were approved and contributed to the culture and architecture of the area.
“We need a Berea that keeps its unique heritage but is flexible enough to foster harmonious developments, whether modern developments or refurbishments. To achieve this we need a planning department that is able to enforce the law and work proactively rather than reactively,” said Pappas.
Johnson and Dunkley said the meeting was conducted in a productive and positive atmosphere and a follow-up meeting is planned for the end of November.
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