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The Department of Development Planning welcomes the adoption of the City of Johannesburg Development Contributions Policy granted by Council today.

Development Contributions are a once-off charge levied by municipalities on the landowner, as a condition for approving a land development application, to cover the capital costs incurred by the municipality when installing new infrastructure or the upgrade of existing infrastructure.

In its essence, the Development Contributions Policy seeks to simplify and integrate the Development Contributions process and charges for the provision of engineering services such as roads and storm water, water and sewage, electricity, and public transport services across the City.

According to the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, 2013, and the City’s Municipal Planning Bylaw 2016, Council has the responsibility to provide external engineering services, whereas the developer incurs all costs of installing internal services of namely roads, storm water, sewer, and electricity within a particular development.

The Development Contributions Policy underwent an extensive public participation process, to give members of the public, as well as the development industry, the opportunity to engage with the documents and submit their comments or input.

As part of innovation and promoting the ease of doing business in the City of Johannesburg, the policy was developed with a progressive calculator for calculating development contributions. The calculator will be readily available to the public on the City’s Development Planning e-service platform.

Member of the Mayoral Committee for Development Planning, Cllr Thapelo Amad, said the City wishes to speed up the rate of development through the new policy.

“The Development Contributions Policy provides greater clarity around existing funding instruments that allows for the timely provision of essential bulk infrastructure required to service the needs of new developments,” he added.

Further to the adoption of the Development Contributions Policy was the approval of the request to offset the payment of external engineering contributions of Fairlands Extensions 33 and 36, in lieu of external construction work undertaken by the developer to the value of over R24-million.

Issued by The City of Johannesburg