• Approvals were halted in August last year after trouble hit the planning department, leading to the suspension of some officials.
• In September 2018, Sonko suspended 15 officials in the Planning department.
Image: /FILE
The Nairobi government has announced the start of a weekly plan to approve construction permits to clear a seven month backlog.
Approvals were halted in August last year after trouble hit the planning department, leading to the suspension of some officials.
Lands executive Charles Kerich, in a notice issued on Wednesday, said the weekly approvals will help clear the backlog in the urban planning department. The notice took effect from February 17.
"The weekly approvals will ease the flow of work and developers will get to their legal construction and property owners to make the changes they want," he said.
The technical committee under the Lands, Housing and Urban Planning sector will now be meeting every seven days – on Wednesdays – for consideration and approval of low-risk development application.
"We urge consultants to be prompt in addressing any comments posted through the e-construction and e-development permit system with regard to their development applications for ease of fast-tracking the approvals," Kerich said.
The projects to be approved are divided into five categories. The categories are single dwelling houses excluding large comprehensive schemes, godowns and warehouses of up to 1400 metres square and all apartments of four levels and below.
The third category is renewals for already approved building plans, changes in use and subdivision schemes and the last one is all internal alterations and amendments not exceeding 500 metres square.
The technical committee will further be required to meet every 14 days –second and fourth Thursday of every month – to approve other development applications, which do not fall in the above categories.
In September 2019, the Kenya Institute of Planners accused the county government of failing to provide building approvals for four months. They also accused the county of unnecessary delays in processing development applications, alleging political interference.
Governor Mike Sonko shifted the blame to the Planning department officials, saying they had approved substandard buildings.
Earlier in August, Sonko had suspended Urban Planning chief officer Justus Kathenge. He suspended him a second time a month later.
On September 25, 2019, the governor suspended 16 county officials, including two county executives, after a classroom at Precious Talent Academy collapsed, killing eight pupils. Fifteen of them were members of the technical committee.
Those suspended included Kathenge, Director Planning Compliance and Enforcement Jusper Ndeke, Development Management Director Dominic Mutegi, Assistant Director Enforcement Ochanda Ondari Fredrick and Director Urban Planning Ruth Waruguru.
The others are assistant director of planning Thomas Dudi, development officer (regularisation of buildings/approval of architectural plans) Simon Onyango, development Control (overseeing approvals of buildings and schools on behalf of public health and safety) Alex Mucheru, development control (approval of building plans and school inspection) Mackline Saitera and in-charge of approval of public buildings and schools on behalf of public health Edna Guantai.
On January 8, 2020, all the above were cleared after investigations into the tragedy were completed.
Early this month, the value of approved housing projects dropped by Sh69 billion within one year. This was caused by the hitches faced at City Hall on permit issuance.
The Architectural Association of Kenya said the value dropped to Sh141 .27 billion in 2019 compared to Sh210 billion reported by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in 2018.
“The delay in the processing of construction permits by the Nairobi government negatively affects all persons in the construction value chain by prolonging project implementation timelines,” AAK said.
The association further faulted the delays on the suspensions of City Hall's technical planning committee and e-permit downtime in the second half of 2019.