Construction and Maintenance

Enact New / Draft Legislation

• National Building Code 2024- Implementation of the Code once it is operational in March 2025. Further, regular reviews should be done to continuously move the Code to greener, healthier, and more affordable buildings. Review the parking requirement, and adjust it in response to demographic, geographic and management.

• Draft Construction Industry Policy- Pursue finalization and adoption to guide the construction industry

• Draft appropriate and enabling legislation/regulations that protect consumers from poor construction quality (which will support the flow of finance into housing).

Review of Existing Legislation / Processes

• Review ALL current statutory costs and processes to promote efficiencies of time and cost.

• Develop a One Stop Shop Framework-Consolidate all statutory approvals and host them in a single location to ease the speed and cost of delivery

• Public Health Act, 1921- Review and modernize the Act to incorporate intentions for and commitments to energy efficiency, and healthy and green buildings.

• Support the use of licensed professionals by encouraging competition as opposed to mandated scale fees.

• Forests (Harvesting) Rules, 2009 - Promote longer-term sustainable forestry frameworks to support affordable housing and green buildings

Develop Regulations for Existing Legislation

• Defects Liability Regulations 2020 - Review of appropriate building regulation, drawing on international experience, in support of driving the finalisation and adoption of the existing Regulations. Ensure that the regulations cover all building types.

• Energy Act No. 1 of 2019 - Formulate regulations to provide for various matters including: energy efficiency and conservation building codes; energy efficiency standards for specific technologies and buildings; and energy consumption norms and standards for designated consumers.

Support Implementation of Existing Legislation

• Environmental Management and Coordination (Noise and Excessive Vibration Pollution) (Control) Regulations, 2009- Implement permissible noise levels for residential areas.

Develop / Finalise Policy

• Develop building maintenance manuals, together with a dissemination programme to sensitize stakeholders on national and international maintenance standards and guidelines.

• Prepare standards for alternative building/construction materials

Other non-legislative recommendations

1. Focus on the provision of trunk/bulk infrastructure in various areas (especially urban areas) to promote the development of affordable housing units since currently private developers are forced to incur the cost of providing infrastructure services, which costs are passed on to end consumers (home buyers);

2. Promote the implementation of the National Building Code 2024 which will be operational in March 2025, with more alignment to climate-resilient measures;

3. Revise the National Building Code 2024 and the Physical Planning (Building) Regulations 2021 to eliminate the disproportionate focus on catering for persons with mobility disabilities to the exclusion of other forms of disability in the building and planning laws, which are set to drive up the cost of housing;
4. Harmonize conflicting/non-harmonious institutional/government objectives. For instance, e.g., the ban on logging of trees in forests has increased the cost of timber thereby undermining the affordable housing agenda;

5. Consider appealing or reviewing through legislation some court decisions which place an undue burden on private developers to provide amenities and fulfil constitutional rights that would otherwise be the obligation of the State. This may potentially disincentivize developers and thus restrict housing supply;

6. Deal with significant discretion and opacity in the building code administration system which creates an opportunity for corruption; In particular, deal with the skewed compliance against formal developers as against informal developers which discourages the scaling up of formal developers, yet this is required to access formal finance instruments;

7. Develop a comprehensive framework detailing the needs, standards, and guidelines for green buildings and publish regulations on energy efficiency standards that are key for green buildings as envisaged and required under the law;

8. Fast track the adoption of the Proposed Climate Change (Green & Resilient Buildings) Regulations 2023 which provide for the construction of buildings which reduce the carbon footprint and are resilient to the impacts of climate change.
9. Implement and make use of the Public-Private Partnerships Act 2021 which is yet to get rolling with respect to affordable housing projects;
10. Finalize and adopt construction industry policy to guide the entire sector;

11. Review the outdated Housing Act (Cap 117) and consider the reintroduction of the Housing Bill 2021 before the Parliament;

12. Develop, or enact strong consumer protection framework standards/guidelines, especially for buyers of off-plan properties who need more robust protection in law;

13. Provide legal recognition to informal builders and incremental construction processes;

14. Develop and publish housing-related data/data bank to inform the market and other stakeholders;

15. Develop and publish standards of alternative construction/building materials and technologies;

16. Develop manual for maintenance of buildings and lack of awareness on national and international maintenance standards; and

17. Adopt consistent nomenclature/classification in different housing regimes.