By Francis Ayieko

City Hall approved 681 planning applications between October and December last year.

Data compiled by the Kenya Property Developers Association (KPDA) shows that high-end suburbs of Karen/Langata and Parklands had the highest number of plans approved, accounting for 17 per cent of all approvals in the last quarter of last year.

The total value of approved permits was worth about Sh73.2 billion, with the City Council of Nairobi collecting Sh45.8 million in permitting fees.

In the report titled, Nairobi Development Permitting Activity, the KPDA says that 10.1 per cent of all building permits came from the Karen/Langata area, while 6.9 per cent of the plans were from Parklands.

Fourty six per cent of the applications were decided within one day and 59 per cent within a week.

categories

Of all the 681 plans approved, 57.2 per cent were categorised as mixed use or residential development, 26 per cent single dwelling, 2.54 per cent residential, nine per cent industrial, and one per cent commercial.

This comes at a time when City Hall is implementing an online plan approval system that has seen it reduce the number of days it takes for a developer to get a construction permit from three or more months to a maximum of one month.

Launched officially by the then Local Government Minister Musalia Mudavadi on September 29, 2011, the automated e-construction permit management system enables developers (through architects) to submit building plan drawings online.

It also allows developers and architects to monitor, in real time terms, the status of the submitted plans as they go through various approval stages.

The system has two ‘faces’ — front and back. The front ‘face’ is a platform for accessing the planning policies, approval minutes and development guidelines by members of the public. It allows online submission of building plans by architects for evaluation and approval.

online systems

The back ‘face’, on the other hand, is a platform for the City Council of Nairobi planning personnel workflow management. It is here where processing of building plans submitted and issuance of construction permits take place.

It also acts as a data bank for the construction industry since the local authority is now able to capture, in real time, details such as the profiles of architects and the type and magnitude of developments coming in a particular area.

Before the introduction of the new system, plans would take three months or more, but now they take one month or less.

The number of plans being approved has also increased from 100 to 300 plans per month, on average, after the introduction of the reforms aimed at streamlining operations.

In 2008, just one year before City Hall launched a rudimentary version of the new system in 2009, the local authority approved 1,066 plans.

This number increased to 2,362 in 2009, 3,203 (2010), 3,145 (2011) and 3,261 (2012).