Harare City adopts one stop-shop for building plans

Municipal Reporter
Harare City Council’s Department of Works (Building Inspectorate) has adopted a one-stop shop where building plan approval meetings are conducted by all relevant departments operating in one office to speed up the process. According to a World Bank Survey on Ease of Doing Business in Zimbabwe, it takes 448 days for one to apply and get a construction development permit and to correct the situation.

Government, with the support of World Bank, has embarked on a variety of reforms to facilitate the ease of doing business.

Director of Works Engineer Phillip Pfukwa said Harare was tasked to introduce reforms to reduce the time it took to approve building plans and issue development permits from 448 days to less than 60 days within a period of 100 days.

“In order to achieve this, the Department of Works Building Inspectorate Section has adopted a one-stop shop, where plan approval meetings are held at Building Inspectorate offices twice weekly on Tuesday and Thursdays.

“To facilitate speedy approval of plans, a detailed checklist of requirements for plan submission had been submitted to all the district offices and all plan entry points including the City of Harare website.

A procedure manual for processing of building plans for building inspectorate and technical officers stationed at districts had also been prepared,” read part of the minutes.

Eng Pfukwa told the committee that there were also legislative amendments which had been made to reduce the number of days to publish plans from 35 days to 14. He said the reforms would improve compliance and transparency in plan processing, increase revenue flows from plan submission fess, improve service delivery to prospective home owners and developers as well as reduce illegal structures.

The committee reiterated the need for a one-stop shop when it comes to approval of layout plans. It expressed concern that district officers were taking too long to return the consultations forms sent to them for special consent applications and urged the acting director of housing and community services to liaise with them to speed up the process.