A Site Development Plan shows how a site as a whole will be developed — the building footprints and where they sit, the access and internal circulation, the parking, the refuse, the landscaping and the levels. It is usually imposed as a condition of a land use approval, and it is approved by the municipality’s planning department rather than by building control. That makes it a planning instrument prepared as an architectural drawing. It is assessed against the conditions attached to your approval, which means the approval has to be read before the layout is drawn. An architect who has not read it will draw a competent scheme answering the wrong requirements.
An SDP is required where something says so — an approval, or the scheme itself. In our experience these are the four situations that bring it up.
Read your conditions of approval before anything is drawn. They are the brief — the parking ratio, the buffers, the access position, the open space — and a layout produced without them is a layout that comes back. The document is a few pages and it is already in your file.
What the planner reads depends on what is being built. These five account for most of the SDPs we prepare.
Townhouses, flats and cluster schemes. Unit layout, parking ratio, refuse points, and the split between private and communal open space.
The bay count against the scheme’s ratio, visitor parking, loading provision, and how vehicles enter and leave without queuing on the street.
Crèches and schools. On-site drop-off and stacking, separation of pedestrians from vehicles, outdoor area and boundary treatment.
Turning circles, hardstand and service yards — the manoeuvring space a delivery vehicle actually needs rather than the space that looks sufficient.
Internal road layout, access control, and what becomes common property. Where roads are to remain private, that is resolved in the SDP.
One drawing, carrying a great deal. Six things are shown on it — and one table, which is what the planner reads first.
Every building in position and dimensioned to the boundaries, with coverage and floor area calculated against what the scheme and the approval permit.
Where vehicles enter and leave, how they move on site, and where pedestrians go. Sight lines at the access and the connection to the street are both assessed.
The bay count against the required ratio, bay and aisle dimensions, visitor and accessible bays, and where loading takes place.
Bin store positions, screening, and whether a collection vehicle can reach them without reversing the length of the site.
Planted areas, the buffers the approval requires to particular boundaries, and how much of the site remains soft.
Existing and proposed levels, retaining where the site falls, and how stormwater is attenuated and discharged.
An SDP is read against the conditions, one by one. We set them out as a schedule on the drawing — the condition as written, and where on the layout it is answered — so the planner assessing it is not left to hunt. In our experience that single table does more for a first-pass approval than anything else in the submission.
Five phases, and the first is reading rather than drawing. What the approval requires determines what can be laid out.
The approval is read in full and every condition bearing on the layout extracted — parking ratio, buffers, access position, open space, phasing.
The scheme resolved against those conditions rather than against the site alone, with the compliance schedule built as the drawing develops.
Lodged with the planning department, not with building control, together with whatever the approval requires to accompany it.
Stamped and returned. From this point the SDP is the framework, and what is built has to sit inside it.
The set is drawn to conform to the approved SDP and lodged with building control, where it is checked against the layout as approved.
The SDP comes first, and once approved it becomes the framework the building plans have to conform to. That is worth knowing at layout stage: an SDP drawn tighter than it needs to be constrains every drawing that follows, and amending it later is a fresh application.
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