PETALING JAYA: Building bylaws should be made uniform across local authorities in all states, says the Association of Consulting Architects Malaysia (Acam).
It said the Uniform Building ByLaws (UBBLs) are anything but uniform, and urged the government to ensure that they are standardised to avoid inconsistent interpretations by officials.
“In terms of the submission process, local authorities should allow digital submissions for all planning permission and building approval documents, as well as all fire, utility, engineering and other submissions.
“All local authorities should coordinate and standardise all the documents required for submission as each local authority presently has different requirements, making them difficult to comply with,” it said in a statement.
Acam added that during the 41st meeting of the National Physical Planning Council last week, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had said the government would be streamlining the One-Stop Centre (OSC) 3.0 Plus procedures, with the approval period cut from 42 days to 21, and the number of agencies involved reduced from 19 to five. OSC 3.0 Plus is an electronic system used for submitting and processing applications for development.
“Acam proposed the re-evaluation of some OSC 3.0 Plus conditions as complicated requirements and conditions can delay the approval process and cause submissions to be stuck at the pre-consultation and online submission stages for a long time, even before the submission is stamped as being received.
“In addition, the conditions for the submission of documents for the Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC) are currently not uniform for each local authority. This needs to be fixed to avoid overlaps and complications.
“Acam urges that the issuance of CCC be made based on the sole decision of the Principal Sub-mitting Persons (PSPs) without requiring the prior permission of the local authority,” it said.
To make it easier for home and property owners, Acam proposed that the planning permission requirement for bungalows in development areas that have been subdivided, be abolished.
“In the long term, the government is encouraged to study various provisions in currently established procedures, regulations and relevant Acts and enactments for any possibility that the planning permission process could be upgraded to replace the building approval so that two separate processes are no longer needed.”
These processes complicate the approval procedures and require a long time, added Acam.
