CITY NEWS ‘We grant building plan approval in 90 days’

The director, department of development control, Alhaji Mukhtar Usman Galadima, has said the department now grants building plan approval within 90 days of receiving the application.

Speaking with journalists recently, he said since he assumed office on August 16, 2016, the department received 2, 798 building plan applications and within the same period, approved 2486.

Galadima also said the department has made two changes in the building plan approval process. “We have introduced the front office where applicants for building plans can be listened to and their complaints dealt with. It is done in a dignified manner in such a way that when you come, there is where to sit down and there is somebody to attend to your issue.

“In another aspect of the building plan process, hitherto, it took somebody one or two years to get approval but by the time we came in we tried as much as possible to work within the law as provided by the Urban and Regional Planning Act 1999 as amended. We try and make sure that you get your building plan approval within 90 days. If we cannot grant you approval in 90 days then we must have a cogent reason and we must tell you why we cannot grant you approval within 90 days.”

He, however, said that there were still challenges which the department was not resting on its oars to address, adding that there was room for improvement in the process.

“We have studied carefully and noticed that we can do better than 90 days and we are trying to improve on the process in line with the ease of doing business of the present administration.

“We want to introduce what is called the accelerated building plan process. We also want to decentralize our operations as regards building plan approval in such a way that zonal offices in area councils or satellite towns can be allowed to accept building plans within their areas and do some elementary processing of the whole thing and then forward them to the main office for subsequent approval,” he added.

The director said about 1000 approvals were yet to be paid for by developers, which was affecting the efficiency of the department.

“Based on that we are developing a software programme that will calculate what you are going to pay to government and from there we can say this is your teller, this is your bill, go and pay. By the time you finish paying, we will process your application because we don’t want a situation where we finish everything and the developers are not ready to pay,” he said.