The Editor
Atlantic Sun
Dear Sir
Your article “City’s planning decisions probed” (Atlantic Sun 22 July) refers.
Whereas the Camps Bay Ratepayers and Residents Association (CBRRA) is affiliated to the GCTCA and supports their efforts in this matter, there are issues specific to Camps Bay that must be highlighted in response to the rather pious comments attributed to the Executive Director of Strategy & Planning, Mr Piet van Zyl.
CBRRA has raised many examples of incorrect planning approvals over the years. These have, in the main, been ignored by the Planning Department (PD). On six occasions the CBRRA and affected neighbours have been forced into the uninviting position of pursuing exorbitant High Court action to correct the City’s planning decisions. In five of those cases (one is still awaiting judgment), interdicts were granted by the Court, based on the submissions that CBRRA had made to the PD in the first place.
Without going into the many CBRRA interventions, it is pertinent to raise one that has been on-going for the past 18 months: The Crystal apartment block, whose monolithic bulk straddles the area between Woodford Ave, Medburn Rd and the Camps Bay Drive.
Probably one of the largest developments in Camps Bay, it has received the protection of City planning officials from the outset. This included allowing the developer to continue construction without suitably approved plans for over a year. The weak excuse being that the top floors weren’t subject to planning deviation, so could continue to be built on an unauthorized basement, which “…would be sorted out later…” !!
CBRRA contends that there are at least 4 major planning violations that have been ignored by the PD. This has been supported by expert Senior Counsel opinion. The PD dismisses this and relies on its own SC opinion, which fails to cover all points raised – but that is a separate issue. CBRRA requested the City to approach the High Court for a declarator order to decide the differences in SC opinions. Not only was it crucial to determine the illegality or otherwise of the proposed building but could also have been used as a means to clarify many planning laws that seem unclear to both the City and the communities they purportedly serve. Predictably, citing the usual excuses, this was rejected and the opinion favouring the developer taken as correct.
However, throughout this process, the CBRRA has based its opposition to this massive development on indisputable fact. And thanks to Cllrs Taki Amira and JP Smith, as late as February of this year, CBRRA were shown the new revised plans that were to be approved the following day. The most cursory inspection of these plans revealed a raft of illegalities and the PD were left to go back to the developer with the bad news.
The solution was, of course, simple: Don’t show revised plans to the CBRRA next time. Just approve it. This they did.
Unfortunately, the illegality on the ground couldn’t be brushed aside so easily – so the situation now exists that the building that has been built does not conform with the approved plans. This in itself is illegal.
Even more unfortunately, Mr van Zyl has not seen fit to “act immediately” despite the numerous requests by CBRRA and neighbours to do so, over a considerable period of time.
CBRRA encourages your readers to inspect the sidewalk along Medburn Rd. The approved plans indicate a 2.1m retaining wall on the boundary, measured more or less from the adjacent kerb level, with the entire distance between this wall and the kerb being an almost level grassed walking area. The reality is that the City have allowed the developer to illegally expropriate City land to create an unstable earth bank that serves only to hide a 4.2m high retaining wall. The reason for this is that it hides an illegal “basement”, which in turn hides the true height of the apartments which is, in our opinion, illegal.
You will also note the 400mm wide sidewalk provided by the developer in lieu of the 1500mm required. It is impossible to even push a pram on this “sidewalk.”
CHRIS WILLEMSE
CHAIR : PLANNING CBRRA
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