MUNICIPAL FISCAL POWERS & FUNCTIONS: MORE CHANGES TO AMENDMENT BILL

MUNICIPAL FISCAL POWERS & FUNCTIONS: MORE CHANGES TO AMENDMENT BILL

• 12 October 2023
• Local Government
• SA Legal Academy

The NCOP’s Finance Committee has tabled a report in the House proposing more changes to the Municipal Fiscal Powers & Functions Amendment Bill. Once passed, enacted and operationalised, the Bill will introduce ‘a uniform, consistent, transparent and equitable basis on which municipalities … calculate and levy development charges on applicants for land development’.

By requiring both public and private sectors to pay development charges, the proposed new piece of legislation is expected to ensure that the ‘user pays’ principle underpins financial planning for ‘a substantial portion of municipal bulk infrastructure investment’. The needs of poor households will then be ‘directly and transparently supported through public subsidies, including intergovernmental transfers’.

Against that backdrop, one amendment recommended by the NCOP committee has implications for land development applications where subsequent developments are likely to entail bulk or link engineering services crossing the original development’s internal boundaries.

It is proposed that, in such circumstances, the applicant and municipal authority should agree whether such engineering services are deemed to be external or internal – and that, where no agreement is reached, the municipal determination should prevail. This has the potential to impact significantly on development levy calculations.

The House is likely to endorse the committee’s recommendations, which will then require the approval of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance before the revised Bill is passed and sent to the President for signature.

• Bill’s ‘B’ version (passed by the National Assembly in May 2023 and sent to the NCOP for concurrence)
• proposed amendments (page 22 of the parliamentary papers)

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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