Building Plan approval process in Kenya.
The developer who can be the land owner or someone who has leased land begins by selecting an Architect to come up with architectural drawings for the buildings.
Once the architectural drawings are ready, the architect can then on behalf of the land owner apply to the Planning department of the County Government where the land is for building permission.
The county government physical planner will require to see that the owner of he land has cleared any pending land rates for the area and that the land has the user defined for the specific project. A change of user application can be done if the current usage is not compatible with the proposed construction.
The physical planner then checks out to see if the architect has designed the building in conformity to the specific county bylaws of the area.
Each county has its own bye laws different form other counties. For example, Nairobi and Kiambu counties have got stringent minimum distances from the plot boundary to where the building construction stands compared to Kajiado county.
Machakos county areas such as Syokimau have got strict laws on how many units one can put up in a 1/8th acre plot.
The county planner will communicate to the architect on which areas of the drawings that have not complied to the county bye laws. The architect will then change the drawings and resubmit again until the county government is satisfied.
The planner then accepts the drawings and issues a bill to be paid by developer. Once developer pays the bill, the drawings begin circulation into further deeper scrutiny into varuous sub departments such as roads, fire and safety, planning, structural engineering, public health.
Once all the sub departments are satisfied that the architectural drawing has fulfilled their requirements, they stamp on the drawing and finally the planner also stamps and issues an approval letter to the developer.
Approval permits are usually for 2 years after which they will require to be renewed afresh. Same case for approval permits for change of user.
Architect Francis Gichuhi Kamau.
0721410684
info@a4architect.com
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