Town & Country Planning and Your Plans

Hi There,

Welcome back to Thought2Realty

In our previous post, we discussed what you can expect from your draftsman and the duties he should perform. Click the link below to have a read, if you haven’t to “Everything You Need To Know Before Hiring Your Architect/Draftsman”.

Firstly, we further examine the architect’s role, specifically in relation to the Town and Country Planning Department, including the payment of fees.

Secondly, we share our experience of a delay in processing our plans at the above-mentioned department.

Finally, we touch a bit on the Environmental Department’s role in approving your plans.

Town & Country Planning and Your Architect

When you are happy with the plans for your home-to-be, they must be submitted to the department granting permission for buildings to be erected in Barbados. This is called the Town & County Planning Department.

The architect/draftsman is responsible for submitting the drawings to the Town and Country Planning Department for approval on YOUR BEHALF. He is required to submit four copies of each set, which consist of more than one page. TWO copies of each set of drawings are kept at Town and Country Planning. One is for the officer to keep on record and the other one will be sent to the YOU after approval.

The last two copies are distributed as necessary to the Environmental Department, Ministry to Transport and Works (MTW) or Agriculture. This depends solely on the location of the land/property in Barbados.

The plans should be submitted electronically to Town and Country Planning along with the relevant form and fees. The application form will be completed by your architect/draftsman.

You do not have to do anything at this point except pay the application fee at Town and Country Planning.

Town & Country Planning’s Application Fee

At present, this fee is BDS0.15 cents per square foot of the building drawn.

So, if the building drawn was 2240 square feet; the required town and country planning fee would be $336.00 dollars.

You can either write a cheque or pay in cash to your architect, who will pay the fee along with the drawings upon submission.

Your plans are now submitted! Once submitted, your plans go through a series of channels when it leaves the front desk. We included a link to the Town and Country Planning’s official website, which shows the process your application goes through before you receive an official response. http://www.townplanning.gov.bb/content.php?c=11

Your architect will receive a receipt and a letter after the process has been completed. The letter will indicate the estimated date your plans will be returned to you from the Town and Country Planning department.

However, this is seldom the case. Our plans were submitted the third week in September 2018, we received our plans in September 2019. It was a long wait, to say the least!

Which brings us to the question of:

What Should You Do When Your Date Has Passed?

You should call!! I laugh as I type this because I was hesitant to call myself. I only called after a friend advised me to. She was in the same situation as I was, her date passed and she had heard nothing. However, within two weeks of calling, she received her approved plans in the mail.

We tried calling and were unsuccessful a couple times. Then, we finally got someone on the line who connected us to the officer responsible for our case. Don’t forget to get the name of the officer! He informed us that a change needed to be made to a part of the drawing, the architect was informed and he was awaiting the amended drawing.

We called back a month later and spoke to the same officer assigned to our case. The minor change was rectified and was under review. We know, this is probably not a good example as we were waiting a long time, but it brought us comfort to know someone was on the case!

Take our advice and call as soon as you can after the assigned date in the letter has passed. Remember we received our plans one year after they were submitted. We believe we would have received them sooner had we called earlier.

Possible reasons for our delay

There are a number of reasons responsible for delaying processing of your application at Town & Country Planning.

Reasons for our delayed approval:

• The Town and Country Planning department relocated to Warrens in 2019
• There were changes to be made to our drawings and in the event that this happens to you, you cannot do anything. Yes, I said it. Town and Country Planning will contact your architect directly to discuss the recommended changes. The revised plan must be submitted to the officer for approval by your architect.

If you do not experience these setbacks, you should receive word on your plans before a year has passed. However, this is at the discretion of the department.

Plans Received!!

It is an exciting day when you’ve received your APPROVED plans from Town and Country Planning. Celebrate!! It was definitely that way for us. We were looking for the postman for quite sometime by that day.

Town and Country Planning will send you a direct response letter by post. If your plans have been approved, you will receive them along with a letter granting permission for the development of the land (if you are building), which are subject to certain conditions. The letter outlines all the conditions necessary to erect your structure. See an extracts 1 and 2 of the letter we received below.

Points to Note

The extracts show four important things to note, as highlighted above:

1. Your plans expire five (5) years after the date of approval. If five years or more have elapsed, a new application must be submitted. (As seen in extract 1, point 5 ). Most persons build within this time frame and would not have to worry about this.
2. Approval must be obtained from The Director of the Environmental Protection Department before construction begins. (As seen in extract 2, point 1). See the section below which goes into more detail.
3. You will receive a form this in the mail, which needs to be filled out and returned to Town and Country Planning, along with a fee of $BDS100.00. This is for the certified inspection of the land and the line marks before construction begins. (As seen in extract 2, point 3).
4. The cost of submitting revised plans will be BDS$150.00. (As seen in extract 2, point 5). This is pretty self-explanatory, if there is a change to your plans after approval, you would need to resubmit revised plans and pay the above-mentioned fee.

Environmental Protection Department

It would be remiss of us to end this post without mentioning the Environmental Department, as such let’s address point number 2 mentioned above.

You will remember we mentioned that the architect sends four (4) sets of copies to Town and Country Planning. Based on the location of your land, the other copies are distributed to the relevant government departments, namely the Environmental Department.

We received permission to erect our structure via letter in the post from the Environmental Department. Once again, this was based on certain conditions. When you receive your letter, read it thoroughly to understand what is required of you. This letter is separate from the one you would have received from Town and Country Planning.

The letter was sent to our draftsman, he then sent it to us. This conditions outlined in the letter are based on the building you are erecting and the location of your land.

CONCLUSION

I hope this post succeeded in giving you a better understanding about the ins and outs of procedures at Town and Country Planning. All the best in this step of your journey!