THE Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) will be upping enforcement activities as it moves to bring down the high numbers of unauthorised construction of buildings across the country.

On Wednesday, CH&PA Chief Development Officer, Germeme Stewart warned of punishment against developers who continue to act in contravention of the Town and Country Planning Act, stating that one matter is already before the court. Stewart was at the time speaking with reporters on the sideline of CH&PA’s first outreach session with municipalities at the Regency Suites – a programme designed to enlist greater support from Local Government Organs–as the authority ups its nationwide campaign.
Backed by Senior Development Planner Fayola Azore and Development Planner, Mariella Khirattie, Stewart said there are numerous cases in which lands are developed without any permission, and in some cases when permission was granted, developers failed to comply with the Building Regulations.

“For example, set back distances; a lot of persons are complaining that people are building too close to their boundary lines,” the Chief Development Planner pointed out.

Khirattie added that the development of land in highly residential areas for commercial and industrial purposes remains a major stumbling block as she cited an example. “You establish a furniture making facility but you are bothering your neighbour. You have dust, you have noise, you have odor, you did not get planning permit, because if you had applied for that before, you would have learnt that the site was not suitable,” she explained.
It was noted that in other cases, non-residential buildings are construction without any parking or offloading area; creating chaos.

In an effort to have a greater level of enforcement and proper land development, Azore explained that through the outreach, CH&PA will be building the capacity of Local Government Organs with focus on the Planning and Building Regulations and provisions provided under.

“At the end of the day, the planning process is not just with the Central Housing and Planning Authority. We have our partners which are the local authorities, so we are starting to deal with the municipalities, and after this we will be going out into the other regions, the NDCs,” the Senior Development Planner explained.
She noted that from the inception, the local authorities can stop breaches before they escalate.

“They can actually stop it from the beginning. They will see when these buildings are going up and they can stop it and then we can still have the contravention served at our end because most times when it comes to us, the building is already up and sometimes it is really difficult,” Azore explained.

During the opening ceremony, CH&PA Senior Development Facilitation Officer, Denis Pellew said that the outreach stemmed from the National Planning Forum 2017.
The forum had discussed the roles and responsibilities of the agency in forward planning for sustainable wholesome communities.

It is the Legal and institutional mandate of the CH&PA, under the Town and Country Planning Act, to prepare development schemes (spatial development plans) to guide all future development, including housing development and regulate land use through the planning permission process.

At the forum it was noted that the mandatory forward planning function was mostly ignored and overshadowed by the agency’s housing function.