In Japan, when it comes to a building construction, there are two major building permissions to be considered.
1 Land development permission and
2 Building permission.
No 1 is required for the land with more than a certain size however, No 2 is required for the most of buildings.
For the large size of land, say above 3000 sqm, for most of the cases, the permission process has been done by a professional. Most likely, architect companies have been taking this role: having the development and building permissions together. In this article, we call all those two permissions as a building permission.
However, this time, I would like to more focus on the development permission.
The process of obtaining that permission are as follows.
1 Designing of exteriors
2 Checking and reviewing relevant local regulations
3 Discussing with local authorities
4 Obtaining neighborhood consents
5 Developing an application documents and submitting
1 Designing of exteriors
Most of exterior designs, such as retaining walls, the water supply and drainage facility, and the access to the main road to the building, etc, all of them are related to the development permissions. Thus, the professional who is responsible for this permission should be mainly involved in this process.
2 Checking and reviewing relevant local regulations
Most of local municipalities have internal guidelines for this development process. By that manual they specify the points to be followed. For instance, safety measures, supply and drainage requirements, protect environments, and avoiding any litigations, all of them are included into the laws, regulations and guidelines. In addition to the practical guidance, the professional needs to check other relevant laws to follow. They are natural park protection law, agricultural promotion law, or requirements of the residential units attaching to commercial buildings.
Most of them require expertise and special knowledges, and therefore the professional needs to be well familiar with those relevant regulations.
3 Discussing with local authorities
Based on the site data, as well as the fundamental information relevant to those laws to be applied, the professional goes to the local authority and discuss in detail over the subject development plan. Especially for the requirements necessary for the approval, most of authorities do not accept so called email base correspondence and therefore, the professional needs to go the local authority office and discuss in detail with the officers.
4 Obtaining neighborhood consents
Depending on the subject project’s size, the pre-consent of neighbors is necessary. The professional develops the explanatory materials, visits each one of neighbors and obtains their written consent for the planned development. Depending on the project, this consent may be considered as the most important. Thus, it may take time and efforts of the professional engineer. This may take from one month to several months as it may be necessary to arrange several meetings with neighbors.
5 Developing an application documents and submitting
Combining all of the documents, the professional develops the document set necessary for the development permission application. With those documents, the professional have pre-discussion with local authority and have their preliminary reviews. Based on the feedbacks which the professional gets from the authorities, the documents should be improved and finalized to the submission. Some points may remain outstanding and may not be fully clarified through the pre-discussions. However, the professional develops the document and finally submits to the authority.
As to the time frame, each process may take from several weeks to one month, except for the neighborhood consents. Therefore, development and building permission may takes at least 4-5 months, depending on the development size though
Should you have any queries or doubts, please send us inquiries.
Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com
News Letter subscription is here
