Expert urges state governments to hasten approval of building plans

NAN-HE-3

 Plan

 Lagos, Aug. 11, 2017 (NAN) The Lagos Chapter of the Nigeria Institute of Town Planners (NITP), has appealed to state governments to hasten approval of and access to building plans to encourage housing development in the country.

Mr Ayo Adejumo, the Vice-Chairman of the institute made the appeal on Friday while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

Adejumo said that lack of easy access to building plans posed great challenges to housing development, saying that it was a causative factor for poor growth of the housing sector.

He said that fast-tracking the process approval of building plans would hasten housing and physical development across the states.

According to him, quickening the process and approval of building plans will also help reduce the number of individuals and developers building without approval.

He said existence of illegal structures, particularly in Lagos state, was due to lack of easy access to building plan approvals.

“Many houses, nationwide, are dead property in the sense that they cannot be used anywhere to raise funds.

“Besides not having Certificate of Occupancy (C of O), they are built without building plan approvals from the government.

“This is not a wise action as many landlords stand to lose if there are problems that may require documents to back up claims of ownership of the property,” he said.

Adejumo said that having approved building plans would assure the developer or home owner that the type of building being constructed was suitable for the area.

He expressed optimism that the e-planning, being planned by the Lagos State Government would effectively check the bottlenecks that hindering the efficiency of the manual process, when operational.

Adejumo, however, advised government officials responsible for issuing the approvals to verify the area in which building would be built to ensure that such building was not under government acquisition before giving approvals.

He also urged those concerns that ensure that building approval conforms to town planning laws.(NAN)

LUC/FF/DUA

Edited by Fela Fashoro/Dada Ahmed