There is still no con­fir­ma­tion on when the Na­tion­al Plan­ning Au­thor­i­ty will come on stream to re­place the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

The Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of De­vel­op­ment Bill (2014), which will op­er­a­tional­ize the NPA, was passed sev­en years ago. How­ev­er, it is yet to be ful­ly pro­claimed.

A Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day ex­am­ined the set­backs in the procla­ma­tion of the bill, which al­so seeks to have pow­ers de­volved to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions for the pur­pose of spa­tial plan­ning.

The Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Marie Hinds, told the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee they are con­cerned that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are not yet ready for that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“It is not easy for them (Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions). We stand ready to con­tin­ue to sup­port but, a Na­tion­al Plan­ning Au­thor­i­ty with­out equipped and ready mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions mean noth­ing be­cause every­thing has to start in that place first be­fore it comes up to the Na­tion­al Plan­ning Au­thor­i­ty. So I would say we need to put a lot more time and ef­fort, re­sources and sup­port on that end”, Hinds stat­ed.

The Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary al­so sought to clar­i­fy con­cerns that the ab­sence of the au­thor­i­ty was to be blamed for the spate of hous­ing de­vel­op­ments be­lieved to be un­reg­u­lat­ed.

“There is an ex­ist­ing en­ti­ty which func­tions on be­half of the cur­rent Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter and that en­ti­ty is the Town and Coun­try Di­vi­sion. It is not as though there was no leg­is­la­tion ex­ist­ing un­der which we can ex­er­cise en­force­ment”, Hinds not­ed.

She ad­mit­ted though that once the en­ti­ty be­comes op­er­a­tional, there will be stricter penal­ties there­by de­ter­ring un­reg­u­lat­ed de­vel­op­ments.

“You will have of­fi­cers in the 14 cor­po­ra­tions, the plan­ning of­fi­cers, the build­ing in­spec­tors, en­force­ment of­fi­cers so there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for many more eyes to see what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground as op­posed to a cen­tral­ized unit which is the Town and Coun­try Di­vi­sion”, ac­cord­ing to Hinds.

Even though the plan­ning en­vi­ron­ment has changed in the last sev­en years, Hinds be­lieves there is no need for fur­ther amend­ments, as sev­er­al were made in 2019. This she not­ed was need­ed be­fore full procla­ma­tion could take place.

“It is the Ur­ban and Re­gion­al Plan­ning and Pro­fes­sion Act that was on­ly passed in 2020. Now, what is the sig­nif­i­cance of that leg­is­la­tion? It al­lows plan­ners, once they are deemed to be plan­ners ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Plan­ners, to par­tic­i­pate in the plan­ning process”, she ex­plained.

Hinds as­sured that the min­istry is work­ing on get­ting the or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture in place for when the full procla­ma­tion takes place.