Trafalgar Division Councillor Ms Kari Douglas might yet prove that crossing the floor from her famous father Mr Easton Douglas’s People’s National Party, to the Jamaica Labour Party, can be beneficial to her new party and the capital city.

Ms Douglas, in her efforts to help whip the Building and Town Planning Committee of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) into shape, is definitely barking up the right tree.

Last week Ms Douglas was front and centre in bringing news that the KSAMC has put a halt on approving the building and planning application for the proposed tallest building in Jamaica, The Ascent, at Oxford Road, New Kingston.

Councillor Douglas, the deputy chair of the KSAMC’s Building and Town Planning Committee, suggested that the disapproval was mostly linked to the Town and Country Planning Provisional Development Order, 2017, which needed to be reviewed, amended and upgraded.

Put more bluntly, the Development Order does not adequately address the growing number of complaints from residents of Kingston and St Andrew about the preponderance of high-rise buildings which are robbing them of their privacy and posing traffic problems.

Ms Douglas — who seems to have followed in the footsteps of her late dad as a land economist, valuation surveyor and real estate dealer — is up against the alleged approval of 26 storeys for The Ascent, saying that the Development Order stops at 12 storeys, the maximum height of buildings in the Oxford Road zone.

She has warned that if the Development Order is not tidied up by July this year, “I am likely to support the elements of a proposed moratorium that has been made by concerned and frustrated residents and prominent public personalities”.

“What they are doing is asking the Government to consider a moratorium on high-rise buildings above three stories and high-density development until the authorities, led by central government, have concluded an audit and interrogation of the building and planning system…” she said.

The councillor appears to be in lockstep with Kingston Mayor Delroy Williams, who has recently been taking on the tough task of cleaning up and modernising the messy and often corrupt building approval process, no doubt helped by politicians themselves.

Mayor Williams has recently been demanding that the Building and Town Planning Committee keep written, detailed documentation of all material considerations, and reasons for decisions taken in the approval process for each building application.

Of course, he himself has come under pressure as mayor from a slew of court rulings against the KSAMC for alleged breaches of the building process which have forced long-suffering citizens to take legal action.

If the instructions are followed through, the building committee will henceforth have to document all planning issues such as amenities and safety, traffic, zoning, planning history, history of enforcement, appeal history, resolution of enforcement objections, relevant plans and policies, and statutory policy guidelines, among other sore points.

The building committee must also document the comments and recommendations from the chief engineering officer, the director of planning, and all the relevant State agencies.

Good luck with that, Ms Douglas and Mayor Williams.