Cape Town - Camps Bay residents are calling for action against City officials involved in what they say is a wrongful extension of a rezoning application without public participation in the area after the developer’s approved rezoning for construction had allegedly lapsed.
The call comes after the Camps Bay and Clifton Ratepayers Association successfully halted construction at 22 Sedgemoor Road, after it took the fight to the high court. The residents’ association made an application to the court to set aside the planning approval of the building and an interim order was granted in December to halt construction work at Erf 2320.
In a letter sent to ward councillor Nicola Jowell, resident Mark Jackson said developers tried to exploit Camps Bay and often almost got away with it, “perhaps due to certain individual City officials not doing their job of serving the public”.
Jackson said there was a need to rather get to the heart of the matter, and clean up the City’s building-plan approvals department than to constantly tackle developers.
“There’s an alleged massive backlog in the City approving building plans, maybe even longer than a year, so the question is, why are they wasting City resources fighting legal battles, defending their bad decisions, when they have so much other work to do?
One has to wonder, who some City officials think they serve. It is shocking that the kind, charitable folk who give up their time to voluntarily participate in ratepayer associations should have to use their funds to take their City officials to court,” Jackson said.
Camps Bay Ratepayers Association chairperson Chris Willemse said changing developments from single to general residential zoning allowed for ridiculous densification and concreting of the environment. Willemse said the officials must be held accountable.
“The developers’ rezoning application lapsed, and when this happens one applies to the City to extend it. However, in this case, the planning laws changed in 2015-16 and if the rezoning was approved under the previous regime one has to make a full application and the City must re-advertise.
“However, this didn’t happen. We believe that the building is illegal and if the court decides in our favour and sets aside the planning approval, the building must be returned to a single residential,” Willemse said.
Willemse said the residents’ association was not opposed to development in the area but favoured sensible and sustainable development.
Deputy mayor and Spatial Planning and Environment Mayco member Eddie Andrews said the court had not found that the City or its officials did not do their job properly, and had also not ruled the building work to be unlawful.
He said the merits of the extension of the rezoning approval would be dealt with in the review application.