The World Bank has stepped in to turn around the crisis in KwaDukuza’s economic development and planning (EDP) business unit, which is struggling to cope with the region’s rapidly-growing property development market.
The EDP unit is responsible for the region’s building control, town planning, local economic development and tourism sections.
KwaDukuza’s crisis came to a head recently when a number of court proceedings were brought against the municipality for failing to consider building plans within the 30 day period as per the Spatial Land Use and Management Act, 2013.
Developers, architects and individuals have encountered enormous obstacles by the red tape and ineffective systems that have caused delays of six months and longer for their plans to be approved by the building plans division.
The long delays in obtaining municipal approval has also created a knock-on effect on the property development market and the local economy in general.
The problem also extends to private homeowners looking to sell their properties.
The failure by the municipality to approve plans on time has led to some homeowners making alterations without the necessary plans and building approval, according to several sources.
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At the request of the national treasury and in line with President Ramaphosa’s efforts to attract international investment, the World Bank Group was invited in February to find solutions to the logjam in the department.
Following consultations with stakeholders, procedures in the building control department include a radical reform of outdated systems and a proposed change in some by-laws.
According to Wold Bank Group consultant Rakesh Beekum, making KwaDukuza municipality’s systems operate efficiently was imperative to promote economic growth and support social development in the region.
At the recent stakeholders meeting Beekum said: “We will continue to work with KDM to hold them accountable for better service delivery. Some of the regulations governing the industry have been in place since 1977 and we need to modify these laws. Our goal is to bring KDM in line with, or better than, Cape Town whose systems have placed it in the top spot in the country.”
For a frame of reference, the number of procedures and time for a small and medium size limited liability company to build a standard sized warehouse in Cape Town involves 17 procedures and 88 days. In Johannesburg the procedure increases to 20 and 155 days and in KDM the time is over 300 days, with too many procedures to count.
Using a world benchmark to quantify the exercise brings it down to seven procedures and under 10 days.
“We want to turn around the time as the processes currently in the municipality are far too long,” he said.
The R1 400 charge for the town planning scheme has been scrapped and going forward it will be available to download from the website free of charge. From July 1 the 12-step building inspection process will also be streamlined to seven steps.
According to KDM’s Farlan Naidoo, while internal challenges had been contributing to the delay in the approval of building plans, applicants also had a role to play in ensuring their applications met all the requirements.
“There are instances where plans have to be referred back to the applicant because they do not comply with the requirements set by the national building regulations. This adds to the delay in granting approval.
“There are also instances where the building plan opens up the possibility of that property being used for something different to what the zoning allows, in which case a rezoning or land-use application also has to be submitted.”
Ballito architect Ken Lever, representing the Institute of Architects, said the industry was pleased to see the progress made in the municipality and while the processes since the beginning of the year had been reduced from 94 days to 80 days there was still much room for improvement with the target being 30 days.
The intervention comes as part of national governments efforts to make it easier for cities to work more efficiently and improve the ease of doing business.
At the request of National Treasury the World Bank Group has stepped in to ensure reforms that have been slow in the past three years are expedited and a continuous, consistent and focused lens is brought to bear on the challenges posed on South African cities.
*Correction: The featured image of Rakesh Beekum, consultant to the World Bank Group, was incorrectly captioned as Farlan Naidoo (head of town planning at KwaDukuza municipality). The programme is financed by SECO/ Vuthela with support from the national treasury and KZN department of economic development, tourism and environmental affairs.
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