Planner at the Town and Country Planning Department, Adrun Benjamin, with students of the Seventh Day Adventist School during a tour of TCP in 2011. According to the TCP report of 2012, one of the major challenges was that of inadequate human resources, which affected the efficiency of the department. Photo: VINO/File

The Town and Country Planning Department (TCP) report of 2012 was prepared by the then Acting Chief Planner, Mr Ronald Beard. Photo: File

In its 2012 report laid in the House of Assembly (HOA) on July 25, 2013 by Premier and Minister of Finance Dr the Honourable D. Orlando Smith, the Town and Country Planning Department stated that intensive but futile efforts were made in 2012 to fill the Physical Planner II post that became vacant during the year in the development Planning Section.

It also highlighted that its two Inspectors were not enough to execute the demands of the department.

As per previous years, the report stated, the limited number of staff assigned to TCP continued to pose a major challenge to the department. “The pace and complexity of the Territory’s development in increasing year by year, and having two Inspectors to cover an intensive and inaccessible geographical area extending across the four main islands and all the small cays, is simply inadequate,” the reported stated.

“Indeed there may be reason to believe that sooner or later unscrupulous developers may be tempted to take advantage of the situation,” the report further mentioned.

Inadequate Remuneration

TCP further said inadequate remuneration was also to be blamed for the human resources challenges.

“As before, the salary associated with technical posts continues to make it difficult to attract and retain qualified staff. A promised review of technical posts service-wide has not come to fruition and is still very much needed.”

Succession planning

On the issue of succession planning, TCP said there are very few local planners and there continues to be a need to recruit personnel for key positions. It also said an aggressive succession plan must be pursued with the aim of training locals and ensuring knowledge transfers.

Further under the topic of challenges, the TCP said Development Control continues to be a key function within the department that promotes and controls orderly, progressive and authorised development territory-wide. “The challenge in this area arises from the limited resources available to respond to developments from Anegada to Jost Van Dyke. Additionally, a great percentage of planning applications fail to meet the minimum planning requirements, resulting in deferred applications that take longer to process.”

As for unauthorised developments, the report stated, the enforcement process is too long. It said planning cases are often viewed as a lower priority than other matters. “The delay in dealing with unauthorised developments gives the public the impression that the matters are not being dealt with, thus providing justification for other offenders,” the report concluded.

It was stated that the year 2012 was a challenging one for TCP but one that it came through satisfactorily, having achieved a great deal with the limited resources available.

Achievements

Among the areas in which TCP reported achievements were processing of Development Applications; Monitoring of ongoing developments; Improved processes; Environmental processes; Movement on the National Physical Development Plan; Formulation of Draft Planning Regulations; and Public outreach.

According to TCP, through the ongoing and informal public outreach initiatives it made continued efforts to bring a fuller and more positive awareness to the public of what ‘planning’ is and how it can help in improving the quality of life of the community and the economy in the short and  long term.