Town planning amendment alarms SOB
You have until Friday to lodge your objections to a new town planning scheme.
SAVE OUR BEREA is alarmed over a proposed scheme amendment to all planning schemes within eThekwini Municipality.
According to Kevin Dunkley, apart from the fact that this could enable the municipality to waive town planning requirements to suit them, another worrying aspect is that the objection period ends on Sunday 25 May.
He said the new scheme basically enabled the city to approve low cost housing or student accommodation in the middle of residential areas, on state-owned land, if they wanted.
According to a municipal report to the town planning sub-committee, there will be an introduction of a new reservation, the Public Housing Reservation, which will allow all spheres of government to fast track the delivery of housing.
The report said in order for the council to speed up the delivery of human settlements, a degree of flexibility in the development approval process was required. In this regard, a new approach was therefore proposed and is aimed at promoting mixed housing typology.
The Development Planning Department considered the use of a reservation rather than a zone, which refers to a piece of land owned by differed spheres of government and used primarily for the use by the state. Its urban form is largely influenced by existing surrounding environment. A zone is strictly managed by a set of prescribed density factors and applies to privately owned land.
According to the report, the approach works, as it will respond to a range of housing interventions that include social housing, gap housing and so on, so on a given site the maximum density will determine the number of units. The site may include a mix of housing typologies which will be determined by surrounding urban form. Where a development comprises multi-storey dwelling units, the first two storeys may be used for other income generating uses other than residential.
Council will identify sites to be released for public housing. The purpose is to promote mixed use housing developments and facilitate integration of communities. Opportunities will be given to home businesses, tuck shops, B&Bs and guest houses to apply.
“Our take on this is that this could very well be a ‘Trojan Horse’ legislation which could have serious implications for ratepayers and property values. It is no good saying the change would only be used wisely when up to now the city has been anything but wise in this area of governance. The city cannot even apply the by-laws as they stand so what happens when we allow them to waive town planning requirements when it suits them. We support the need for housing but this is not the way of implementing it. This smacks of a plan to make it easier to get around what is already a problem in some areas where unscrupulous developers are complaining of over-crowding that exists at the moment. The other irritating aspect is that period for comment expires on Sunday 25 May which means that Friday 23 is the last day which really is available because the city is closed over the weekend. So two days for comment get stolen by ineptitude of city officials,” said Dunkley.
If the community wants to object to this proposed amendment, they should lodge a written comment for the attention of Mr M Allopi, PO Box 680, Durban, or deliver it to eThekwinin Municipality’s Land Use Management offices, Room 203, 166 KE Masinga (Old Fort) Road.
