Building Projects to Come Under Strict Inspection by KSAMC

All building projects approved by the Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) will be subject to mandatory inspection, every three months, as part of a suite of changes to improve the building and planning approvals processes.

Mayor of Kingston, Senator Councillor Delroy Williams, announced the changes during his contribution to the State of the Nation Debate in the Upper House on Friday (January 14).

“We also said that there ought to be inspections at different stages of the development, separate from the mandatory inspection. So, when you are past the foundation stage, that’s an inspection, and for every single floor you go, we [must] have an inspection before you move on,” he pointed out.

He noted that the strict inspection regime would address many of the breaches that are found far into the building process.

Mayor Williams told the Senate further that the Chief Engineering Officer will be required to submit, on the last working day of each month, a detailed list of building projects taking place across the municipality.

“We have also asked that no application should come to the [Planning and Building] Committee without the notice of intent to construct, so that we would know that the residents would have been aware of the intent to build at that particular location. It must be posted visibly at the site or at the nearest police station or post office,” he noted.

“We also said, no single business officer [should] manage an application from start to finish…so we would have at least three to four building officers managing a particular application,” he added.

The Mayor further informed that a letter has been written to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development for the restructuring of the Planning Department.

“We have made our proposal in terms of the creation of two units – the sustainable planning implementation and monitoring unit and the development applications management unit. Two separate units should be created within that department,” he said.

He further indicated that the KSAMC has written to the Prime Minister, through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, for an interrogation of the entire building and planning approvals processes.

“[We are] asking the Most Hon. Prime Minister to take this interrogation all the way to the issuance of strata titles because we felt that there were weaknesses and we felt that there had to be a far more robust system of cross-checking before the issuance of strata titles, ” he said.