A local authority keeps a copy of every building plan it approves, and the records in Johannesburg go back decades. Owners routinely assume nothing exists for an older property, and something usually does; the original house, sometimes an addition from the seventies, occasionally a set nobody in the family remembers submitting. Finding it is a search rather than a request. Records are indexed by erf and township, and both change: townships are renamed, erven renumbered, properties consolidated and subdivided. A search that returns nothing under the current description is not proof that nothing was approved.
Almost every search starts because somebody else asked for the plans. In our experience these are the four.
Before anything else, look in your own transfer file. Approved plans are often handed over at registration and filed with the deed, and a set you already own costs nothing to find. Where that comes up empty, the search starts with the property’s history rather than with its current erf number.
A search has five possible answers, and only one of them closes the file. Knowing which you are likely to get changes what you budget for.
The archive holds the plans and what they show is what stands. Copies are obtained, certified where a bank or conveyancer requires it, and the matter closes.
The original house is on record; a cottage, a patio or an enclosure is not. What is unapproved is drawn as built and submitted.
Nothing under the current erf number, and a full set under the township’s previous name or the erf’s earlier one. Most nil returns end here.
Sheets missing from the archive copy, or microfilm too degraded to read. What survives is used and the rest is measured and redrawn.
A genuine nil return, after the history has been searched. The building is measured and as-built plans are prepared for approval.
A search is archival work, and it starts with the property rather than with the plans. Six things are looked at.
Erf, portion and township as the title deed records them. The starting point, and often not the description the plans were filed under.
Townships are renamed and re-proclaimed. A suburb that has been called three things since 1950 has records under all three.
Consolidations, subdivisions and renumbering. An erf that was two properties in 1970 may hold two sets of plans under two numbers.
Paper, microfilm and digital records of different vintages, indexed differently and held in different places. Knowing where a period is kept is half the search.
Where a house predates the earliest record on file, that explains the gap rather than leaving it open. Age tells you what to expect to find.
A set retrieved is read against what stands. This is where the useful answer usually is, and it is the step most searches skip.
What you receive is not only a copy. It is the set as the council holds it, a note of what the search covered and what it did not, and a plain statement of where the drawings and the building differ. On a sale, that last part is what the conveyancer actually needs.
Five phases, and the search itself is the third. Most of the work is establishing what to search for.
Every description the property has held — erf numbers, portions, township names — established from the deed and from what preceded it.
Each description searched against each record type for the periods that apply, rather than one lookup against the current erf number.
What is found is obtained and copied, certified where a bank or a conveyancer requires it in that form.
The drawings read against what stands on the property, so the gap between the two is identified rather than assumed.
A plain statement of what exists, what does not, and what has to happen next.
The older the building, the longer the search and the more likely the record is partial. Age is the best single predictor of how a search will go, and we can tell you what to expect before you instruct us.
Modest against the scheme it unlocks, and driven more by the conditions than by the site. Traffic, landscape and stormwater input is commissioned separately where the approval requires it. Four things move the figure.
A five-unit cluster and a two-hundred-unit estate are different exercises. Every unit adds parking, refuse, circulation and open space to be resolved and shown.
Some approvals impose a handful of conditions. Others run to pages, each of which has to be demonstrated on the drawing and answered in the schedule.
A traffic impact assessment, a landscape layout or a stormwater management plan, where the approval calls for one. Each is a separate appointment.
An SDP tracks the development it describes. Where the unit mix, the access or the phasing changes during design, the layout and the schedule move with it.
Set it against a project that cannot move. Until the SDP is approved the building plans will not be considered and the approval it sits under cannot be given effect, so every cost on the scheme runs while nothing progresses. It is usually the smallest drawing on a project and the one holding the rest of it.
An SDP does not arise on its own. Three approvals impose them, and one thing follows.
What developers and architects ask us about getting a layout approved.
Send us the erf number and your conditions of approval.
Send us the erf number and your conditions of approval. We will tell you what the layout has to answer, where the conditions leave you room, and what an approved SDP would take. Initial consultations carry no obligation.
35 Fricker Road, Illovo, Sandton · Site Development Plans across the Gauteng City-Region