Town Planning amendment will not impact Berea, says council

CONCERNS over a proposed amendment to all planning schemes with eThekwini are still being voiced by members of Save Our Berea civic organisation.

When the issue first came to light, Save Our Berea’s Kevin Dunkley said apart from it enabling the municipality to waive town planning requires to suit itself, the objection period only gave residents two days in which to lodge objections.

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 desired.

Dunkley and SOB co-founder, Cheryl Johnson called for the public particpation process to be restarted. “The public participation process is a shambles. Surely with something as important as this, Land Use Managment (LUM) should get hold of local newspapers and set the tone by explaining what they intend to do. I think the process was illegal by closing objections on a Sunday,” said Dunkley.

Ward councillor, Martin Meyer said it had been agreed at a meeting of council that the city had not followed due process and they were in essence voting on sending the proposal to the public for comment, when the process had already ended.

“I asked in council that the matter be referred back to the committee so that the process should start afresh, however this request was only supported by the DA and it was defeated. The DA spoke against the motion, and was also the only party to give the recommendation a no vote. As we are not the majority party on council the process was thus agreed upon,” he said.

However, councillor Geoff Pullan said SOB did not have to be concerned. He said the amendment would in fact help in getting public housing off the ground. “Government, at all levels, has found it difficult to get public housing off the ground. This new zone for public housing is an attempt to speed things up, and seems to be aimed at providing large housing schemes. To convert a small piece of council land in an established suburb is not likely to be cost effective. Economies of scale only kick in when there are a number of units to be built. Hence my feeling that there won’t be such developments on the Berea. Land use zonings are applicable to the whole of eThekwini but, as in this case, are really only practicable where there are large enough tracts of vacant land.”

Meyer said the matter had been explained to EXCO and council that the amendment would merely be a measure to rezone mostly city owned land in areas identified suitable for the construction of low cost housing. “The point thus being that restrictions on building low cost housing be relaxed to speed up the process. It does affect the Berea in the sense that the new guidelines will be effective for the whole city, but as there are no huge patches of state owned land in the area, there is no such land identified for development, except a small piece of land in lower Morningside that I am aware of. This is not to give developers a free hand, as far as my understanding goes,” he said.

Meyer said the fact that there was so much confusion on the matter showed why the public participation process should not be subject to shortcuts.

“The correct process was not followed, and the city is making a mistake regarding this in my opinion. I will continue to follow this up with LUM, and will continue to ask for more public information and public participation on this matter,” he said.

City architect, Jonathan Edkins, who addressed residents at the recent Save Our Berea monster meeting, said he had met with the president of the KwaZulu-Natal Institute of Architecture to discuss the possibility of introducing a process for independent, informed and professional architectural review of proposed building developments which were submitted to the city for approval.

“The institute will be submitting a proposal in this regard, which will be considered by the deputy city managers and city manager, and taken forward for necessary council approvals if agreed at an administrative level,” said Edkins.