New Adventure

Since 17/4/2010, I have been entrusted to oversee the operation of One Stop Secretariat of MBPJ. It is an exciting journey for me in furthering the purpose of town and country planning as well as incorporating the principles of sustainable development in actual physical form with impacts on social and economic development.

For the past 2 months and plus, I have been keeping myself busy in familiarising the rules and regulations as well as the procedures. Surprising me, it took some time to right my frame of thoughts on the existing practice with those provided for. For example, I have thought that with local plan in place, it must be very easy of checking the compliance of planning standard and guidelines, but to my surprise many are still fell back to the old practices of "enquiring" the best deal even though it was stated clearly allowable intensity of development in the local plan.

Another excitement was the Council decision in allowing views of public been considered by way of public views hearing session rather than shut the door down completely even though it is allowed for areas within the local plan coverage. Although it is not a mandatory requirement for Council to notify and consult adjoining land owners on proposed development within the vicinity if a local plan has been gazetted, The Council decided to hear them out. I think it is Local Agenda 21 in practice.

Yet another interesting turn of event was the decision of Council to declassify the condition of planning permission for a project recently. This must be the first time that a local planning authority in Malaysia has made known to the public the details of planning approval. I believe in the spirit of good governance and freedom of information, this must be a foresight and way forward, and break through for local governance.

Well, I believe more will to come.