CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Housing and Urban Development Department announced a series of measures to simplify and speed up residential building approvals.
Expansion of self-certification, introduction of third-party certification and granting more powers to local bodies to clear housing projects are among the measures.
For residential buildings, the self-certification limit has been increased from 3,500 sq ft to 5,000 sq ft for G+2 and Stilt+3 structures. Third-party certification will be introduced for residential buildings up to 8,070 sq ft.
CREDAI Chennai president Mehul Doshi said the 5,000 sq ft self-certification limit was below what the industry had sought. "We had asked them to increase it to 10,000 sq ft," he said, arguing that this would bring some smaller developer projects within the self-certification system.
Corporations and municipalities will now be able to approve residential buildings up to 16,140 sq ft against the earlier limit of 10,000 sq ft. Town and village panchayats will have powers up to 12,912 sq ft (1,200 sq m). The government has also proposed an end-to-end online process for land-use change applications, allowing applicants to track applications through the various stages.
Doshi also said the third-party certification route could be extended substantially beyond the proposed 8,070 sq ft. "Third-party certification is something which can definitely increase the limit substantially," he said, suggesting that it could go up to 20,000-25,000 sq ft.
Arivalagan, managing director of MAS Construction, also saw the move towards online and professional-led approvals as a positive, but stressed that implementation would determine whether the reforms deliver the intended benefit.
"Under the earlier system, applicants have to rely on engineers or middlemen to take applications through different stages, creating additional payments," he said.
CREDAI also suggested elimination of approvals from the local bodies, suggesting that it could instead be issued at the CMDA or DTCP level.
The government has also introduced third-party certification for commercial buildings up to 3,230 sq ft and industrial buildings up to 26,900 sq ft in SIDCO, SIPCOT, ELCOT and approved industrial layouts. Local bodies' commercial approval limit has been raised from 2,000 sq ft to 5,380 sq ft.