Metro building plan bottleneck

City still has to appoint qualified examiner after a year

SEVERAL property developments in Nelson Mandela Bay have been stalled because the city has had no qualified technician to pass building plans for the past three weeks. Industry experts have warned that because the position of a plan examiner has not been filled, this could result in more than a month of delays in building approvals and could hurt the city’s economy and compromise jobs.

However, the municipality said yesterday building plans were being processed again to clear the bottleneck.

Municipal spokesman Kupido Baron said interviews to fill the vacant post would be held today.

Baron said the position had been vacant for about a year, during which three building inspectors shared the task in addition to their own responsibilities.

“However, they have since [stopped] and a backlog has accumulated. There has been a three-week delay in the processing of building plans, but building inspectors have been requested to again assist and the backlog of only three weeks has been addressed,” he said.

The SA Property Owners’ Association (Sapoa), a body representing the commercial and industrial property industry, expressed concern at the delays.

Sapoa’s Port Elizabeth regional chairman, Mark Bakker, said: “For building plans to be passed they first need to go through the various departments in the municipality, from sewerage to electrical, eventually ending at the planning department where the plan examiner gives his final sign-off. The issue here is that there is no plan examiner at the moment, meaning there is a bottleneck of plans.

“The way we understand it is that the position had been filled temporarily and they are now interviewing guys. We heard that someone had gone through all the relevant interviews but eventually did not meet the municipality’s BEE criteria,” Bakker said.

But Baron said the various departments within the metro had specific equity targets which had been identified.

Eastern Cape Institute of Architects presi-

‘ This slows development and everyone in the industry is affected

dent Tim Hewitt-Coleman said he wrote a letter to the municipality asking for clarity on the matter. “They responded and did not say why there was a delay, but they did say it would be resolved in the next two weeks.”

He said there was anxiety among commercial developers who had contractual commitments to finish projects by a certain date.

“These developers have made certain undertakings and a delay of a month or even two weeks could make them decide to commit that cash to another endeavour with less uncertainty,” Hewitt-Coleman said.

DA councillor Andrew Gibbon said the economic impact of these delays, affecting both developers and employees, could well run into tens of millions of rands and undermine future job creation opportunities in the Bay.

Hubert Sieg, of Imbono FJA Architects, said the delay posed a problem for the firm because if building plans were not approved then banks were not willing to provide funding for projects.

“This slows development down in the metro and everyone in the building industry is affected. We have a couple of smaller projects and then one large one awaiting approval.

“I do have to say, however, that we have probably one of the most efficient and professional building inspectorates in the country. It has just had one of its ‘wheels’ temporarily removed but we have been assured that this will be resolved during the course of the next week,” he said.