The recent notification of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change allowing local bodies to stipulate environmental conditions while granting building permission, will improve the launch pipeline and save time and costs for developers.
According to the notification, municipalities, development authorities and district panchayats can stipulate environmental conditions while granting building permission for building or construction projects more than 50,000 sq mt and less than 1,50,000 sq mt of built-up area.
“This can prove to be an impetus to the housing and construction sector. It will not only ease the approval process by substituting environment clearance approval with self-declaration for certain projects, thereby, improving the launch pipeline and saving on time and cost for developers, but will also improve the ease of doing business,” ICRA Vice-President and Group head, Shubham Jain, said.
He further said this development would partly underpin the housing supply target of the government over the near to medium-term. The easing of environment clearance approval is expected to support housing supply by reducing the time taken to commence projects having a built-up area between 5.39 lakh sq ft and 16.14 lakh sq ft.
The notification also defines built-up area or covered area on all the floors put together, including its basement and other service areas, which are proposed in buildings or construction projects.
Projects having more than 20,000 sq mt and up to 50,000 sq mt of built-up area were already exempt.
“The local bodies are expected to integrate environmental norms in the necessary bye-laws and issue the completion certificate upon satisfaction of the same. Both the developers and local agencies will have to be more responsible and vigilant in order to ensure that the development is environmentally sustainable over the long-term,” Jain added.