HRM improving housing, development application timelines, report finds

Processing of housing and planning applications in Halifax Regional Municipality are not moving at the glacial pace perceived by many, according to a report presented to regional council Tuesday.

“I agree with those who say that we need to be brutally honest and open with this and let people see this because I think it would dispel some of the myths and it would also put pressure on us to always make sure that we are doing a better job,” Mayor Mike Savage said at the completion of the presentation by Erin MacIntyre, director of development services for HRM planning and development.

MacIntyre’s 11-slide report on HRM’s key performance indicators relative to application processing timelines for permit, subdivision and planning applications was generated by council and industry’s request for access to “transparent reporting on timelines,” she said.

Council passed a motion on Jan. 10 requesting a HRM staff report to outline current timelines and recommend target times for application and permitting processes, to prepare a twice-annual report on those key performance indicators, and to prepare a list of potential provincial legislative charter changes that would speed up various permitting and approval processes.

MacIntyre began the presentation with a graph showing where HRM is and how it has progressed in average time from submission of an application to the issuance of a permit for occupancy, blasting, decks, fences, mixed-used buildings and lower-density residential permits from 2021 to the present.

The processing times during the first three months of this year were reduced considerably in almost all categories from the previous 12-month period.

For residential building permits, the current processing time from application to issuance calculated from January through March of this year was 17 calendar days, just three days shy of the 14-day target processing time. During the previous 12-month period, that processing time was 33 days.

In the mixed use and commercial building category, the application processing time was 21 days during the first three months of 2023, down from the targeted time of 45 days achieved over the preceding 12 months.

Construction permits were processed within an average of seven days for the first three months of 2023, down from 12 days the year before, with a target time of 14 days.

The application times for land use approval only – applications not paired with building permits – was 13 days this year and 23 days in 2022. 

The target times are 14 days for minor residential applications and 45 days for land designated for mixed use and commercial buildings.

“A coincidental set of challenges presented themselves in 2021 that affected the processing times, including staff turnover, increased application volumes, newly adopted and more complex regulations within the regional centre, orientation to our new PPLC (online permitting, planning, licensing and compliance) system and the challenges to the conversion to the work-from-home practice,” MacIntyre said.

“The most significant contributor to the processing delays of 2021 was the staffing challenges, which council addressed by adding 11 new positions focused on permitting within the 2021-22 budget. We’ve since organized staff into cross-divisional, geographic based regional teams, which has increased regulatory expertise in each area and provided staff with partner colleagues in other areas of the business unit.” 

The urgency to decrease lag times in new housing developments was accentuated by the Executive Panel on Housing in HRM, a task force created by the provincial Progressive Conservative government in November 2021 to address Nova Scotia’s housing crisis.

“While Nova Scotia has been growing quickly, housing supply in the province has not kept pace,” read a housing report commissioned by the task force and delivered by Deloitte in October 2022. 

“This has created an urgent need to build more housing units.”

The Deloitte report noted that anticipated increases in demand for housing units in HRM fueled by population growth and coupled with an existing housing deficit meant that HRM must drive the completion of additional housing units to historical volumes.

“Specifically, it is estimated there has been an under-supply of new housing units in HRM of approximately 17,000 units between 2016 and 2021,” the report reads. “To address that deficit and prepare to meet the 2027 HRM population target of 525,000, HRM would need to complete 7,600 units per year between now and 2027, compared to the historical rate of only 3,000 per year.”

MacIntyre’s report showed that in 2022, preliminary subdivision applications averaged 2.5 months to process, short of the two-month target. 

Concept applications for subdivisions averaged 7.5 months in 2022, below the target of four months, and applications for infill finals proposing frontage on existing streets took three months on average, a month more than targeted.

The planning application processing times for different levels of housing developments in 2022 and 2023 ranged from three to 22 months longer than targeted times.

MacIntyre said council’s request for routine reporting on key performance indicators on processing times has resulted in up-to-date information on permitting volume and processing times being made available on a newly created page on the halifax.ca website under the home and property tab and building and development permits link.

MacIntyre said several legislative changes to the HRM charter made at the request of the municipal planning and development unit have resulted in better outcomes and more efficient processing planning applications.

“No additional charter changes are necessary right now,” she said. “Our next focus for planning applications will be to work with our industry partners to ensure planning applications meet minimum requirements, are complete and largely approvable and are responsive to policy.”