ANTON Bredell, Western Cape Minister of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, on Thursday 27 October 2022, granted an exemption to all municipalities in the Western Cape from certain provisions of the Western Cape Land Use Planning Act. The aim of the exemption is to encourage the integration of the public participation processes in the various laws that govern new developments.
“This is another action step of the Western Cape Government to cut red tape, creating an environment for the private sector to grow our economy and create jobs,” Bredell said.
Recent studies have shown that developers who must obtain such a range of development approvals could easily wait up to six years before construction can commence. To address this challenge, the Premier established the Fixed Capital & Property Development Work Group (FC&PD) which identified several initiatives to reduce the overall regulatory burden of development applications. Integrating the various processes more effectively is one of the activities of the FC&PD.
“Ultimately the laws governing these sectors need to be streamlined for more effective integration, but, because amending laws takes so long, I have made use of the exemption mechanism provided for in the Western Cape Land Use Planning Act to grant the exemptions in the interim until such time as the laws have been amended formally. In doing this, developers and municipalities are enabled to process some of these applications in parallel and save a lot of valuable time,” Bredell said.
According to a recent report by Statistics South Africa, the value of building plans passed in the province totaled R24.29bn for the period between January and August 2022. This represents a year-on-year growth rate of 25.2%.
