Cape Town creates specialist hub for major development applications
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The City of Cape Town is setting up a Strategic Development Applications Hub at the Table Bay district planning office to handle large, complex projects separately from routine land use and building plan submissions.
Cape Town is establishing a dedicated unit to assess major property developments, separating large and complex applications from routine land use and building plan submissions in an effort to cut delays and support investment.
The Strategic Development Applications Hub (SDH) will handle projects that require specialised planning expertise and fall outside routine applications, the City said. It will be based at the Table Bay District Planning Office in the central business district, and the Development Management Department is recruiting planning and development specialists for the team.
Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment Eddie Andrews said the model would distinguish between ordinary applications and those needing a different skill set. "The Strategic Development Hub is the result of a process I initiated during this term of office, originally known as the Development Management Optimisation Process, to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of development application assessments," he said.
The City’s eight district planning offices will continue assessing routine applications and are due to receive additional resources in the coming months to improve turnaround times, Andrews said.
Alongside the hub, the Development Management Department is preparing changes to streamline the property development process, including the phased introduction of artificial intelligence-assisted and automated processing. The aim is to reduce manual work and repeated processing, improve visibility of application workflows and progressively automate minor, lower-value and less complex applications.
Building plans and land use applications are assessed against the Municipal Planning By-law, the City’s Development Management Scheme and the National Building Regulations. The hub is scheduled to become operational by February 2027, provided the establishment process proceeds as planned.