By Chantelle Benjamin

Johannesburg, which has come under increasing pressure from disgruntled property developers to improve its turnaround time for building and rezoning applications, plans to approve 60% of building applications within 24 hours.

Some developers say they are kept waiting for up to four years for rezoning or township development approval, prompting legal action by developers desperate to speed up the approval process.

City of Johannesburg planning chief for urban development Prof Philip Harrison said yesterday that from September a new customer service centre, the Metro Link Centre, would make it possible to process two-thirds of building applications in 24 hours. Up to 70% of plans could be approved within 28 days.

Harrison said improvements to the city's development planning and urban management systems were essential if the city was to reach, and sustain, its 9% growth target. The city approves 22000 building plans annually, worth R5bn a year, and receives 6000 township planning applications an increase of 6% a year.

The urban development department has set targets for its 2007-08 financial year which will see approval for rezoning applications taking nine months instead of a year, 70% of building plans being approved in 28 days, of which 60% are expected to have been approved in 24 hours.

Township approval will still take nine months and consents five months on average.

Neil Gopal, CEO of Sapoa, said his organisation welcomed bold steps to ease the logjam.

Sapoa had been requesting a meeting with the city for a year to address issues with town planning, which many felt were deteriorating, despite assurances from city officials that turnaround times were improving.

Tiaan Ehlers, director of development management for the department, said the department needed to improve its image.

"We have been criticised for being unapproachable, because we do not answer our phones, and the public can only be assisted at certain times of the day. The help desk is intended to improve service."

The metro is also creating a single town planning scheme to replace the 13 separate planning schemes Johannesburg inherited, in a bid to eliminate some of the uncertainty created by different systems. The scheme is to be presented to the mayoral committee for approval before submitting it for public participation.