Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning

REPLY:

Red-tape is defined as the unnecessary imposition of administrative processes, bureaucratic procedures and duplication of legislative requirements. It does not include meeting the minimum or prescribed legislative requirements. Red-tape affects my portfolio as a result of its defined regulatory function. Accordingly, the measures implemented are aimed assisting and facilitating the regulatory administrative processes. Specific interventions include the following:

1. The Department is a permanent member of the Provincial Red-Tape Reduction Unit Working Group (now called the Ease-of-Doing-Business Unit). It has been a member since its inception and is actively assisting the Red-Tape Reduction Unit with queries and assistance requests and other initiatives to address red-tape issues.
2. The Department established a Directorate: Development Facilitation which aims to be proactive by resolving systemic issues that impact on multiple stakeholders and role-players – as opposed to resolving individual business’s blockages or issues.
3. As a regulator, that is required to consult with other Organs of State during its decision-making process, the Department has entered into operational agreements with these Organs of State (such as Heritage Western Cape and Department of Water and Sanitation) to obtain their comments in an expedient manner. This reduces the timeframes for the consideration of applications.
4. Various legislative timeframes have been imposed by legislation, on both applicants and on the Department in order to ensure that applications are not unnecessarily delayed.
5. Business improvements and optimisation exercises are being conducted to assess the efficiency of operational processes.
6. In order to improve predictability, various strategic planning and environmental initiatives are underway to assist enabling the development environment. Three specific examples are:
7. 1. The Department is currently assisting four municipalities to develop Spatial Development Frameworks (SDF) which would strategically address development issues in the SDF process but also utilise the SDF to exempt development applications, which adheres to the SDF, from the requirements of environmental impact assessments, the Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act as well as the Western Cape Land Use Planning Act. Not only would this save developers large sums of money but more importantly also save substantial time in the application process.
8. 2. The second project specifically aimed at red tape reduction was a regulatory assessment into the agri-processing sector. Blockages in the planning and environmental application procedures were investigated and appropriate amendments to regulations were effected giving effect to much shorter procedures.

1. 3. A third project the Department is currently considering is a strategic environmental process to deal with the raising of the Brandvlei Dam intake canal. The increased capacity will make additional irrigation water rights available for more than 4000 ha. As the vast majority of the new irrigation hectares will involve the clearance of natural vegetation the Department together with the Department of Agriculture will deal with these environmental impact assessments at a strategic level and by doing that avoid possibly hundreds of environmental impact assessments being submitted at great cost and more importantly save a lot of valuable time.
   4. Other examples of such initiatives are:
      1. Land Assembly Strategy and Action Plan
      2. Catalytic Initiatives
      3. Regeneration Projects
      4. Built Environment Support Programme
      5. Coastal Setback Lines
      6. Urban Area Determinations
      7. Maintenance Management Plans
      8. Infrastructure and Growth Plans
      9. Human Settlement Plans

Municipal Support & Capacity Building Strategy