HUGH Hart, a member of the Economic Growth Council (EGC), wants municipal corporations islandwide to speed up the process of approving applications for buildings subdivisions and other developments.

Hart told the

Jamaica

Observer Wednesday that a sub-committee of the EGC was finalising a plan that would streamline the process and set a time frame for each aspect of the approval process.He said that the development approval process islandwide was clogged up, although the approval process at some of the municipal corporations was “OK,” and at others it was not.“I have some applications in my office awaiting approval that’s taking up to 20 months. It’s blocking up labour, employment, cement and steel,” Hart said.People’s National Party (PNP) Councillor Patrick Roberts, speaking at Wednesday’s Building and Town Planning Committee meeting of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), pointed out that from 2012 the then PNP-managed Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) had started to approve building applications in under 90 days.At the sane time, Roberts questioned whether a proposal from the EGC to reduce the approval time for development projects to 90 days was part of a Government plan to remove the approval of development projects from the KSAMC and other municipal corporations.The Jamaica Labour Party’s Lee Clarke, vice-chairman of the Building and Town Planning Committee, in responding to Roberts’ remarks, said that during the 40 years he had been a councillor, governments were always trying to take away and diminish the strength of councils.However, Kingston Mayor Delroy Williams, who is also the chairman of the Building and Town Planning Committee, told the

Observer that he was not aware of any such intention by the Government. “I would not support that intention,” Williams said.The mayor said that the KSAMC had a 60-to-90-day turnaround time for approving building applications for commercial and residential developments. He pointed out that the applications had to be vetted by a number of external agencies before the KSAMC could approve them.In the cases where the applications were not approved within the 90 days, the KSAMC could not be blamed as other agencies were involved in the process, he said, noting that in some instances where there was a delay in approving the project, it was for a good reason.Mayor Williams, who argued that speed had to be considered within the context of due diligence, said that the rights of the citizens had to be protected and the risk factors carefully considered before approval is given.“I wouldn’t want to approve and then there is flooding. Economic growth cannot come at the expense of the city. We have to go to the National Environmental Protection Authority and other agencies for engineering checks, so the process needs time. Unless we want more Clarendons,” Williams said, in reference to the recent flooding in the parish.