County streamlining development process

The County of Essex is looking to find ways to streamline its development application process.

At last week’s county council meeting, manager of planning services Rebecca Belanger stated there is a new process.

Belanger said that in the past couple of years there has been a notable increase in the number of condominium applications for approval on redevelopment of lands in urban centres.

“One of these improvements underway presently is the implementation of CloudPermit planning module which will provide a web-based platform for processing the subdivision and condominium applications county-wide,” said Belanger.

In 2019, there were 30 applications and that number has increased to the current 130 applications the county is processing.

Belanger presented the Planning Services Annual Report, which addressed key responsibilities of the county’s planning department.

“The report also provides comments on the planning division actions for achieving goals as best described in the County Strategic Plan,” she said.

Belanger noted there are efforts to modernize the development of the review process which is expected to improve co-ordination between the county and the seven local municipalities.

“Several municipalities have recently adopted secondary plans for significant greenfield areas along with associated servicing strategies which will lead to strong growth in these municipalities for years to come,” wrote Belanger in her report.

That co-operation between the lower and upper tiers of local government include large scale projects including county regional energy plan, large scale industrial community improvement program guidelines, county environmental impact assessment guidelines, regional employment land strategy, specialty crop study, coastal resilience action plan and development changes study and by-law.

County streamlining development process

By Fred Groves