Vancouver
City Manager's Office
Pilot of Regulatory Changes - Internal Development and Modernization Task Force
14574
Executive summary
- This report recommends that Council refer for consideration at a Public Hearing a series of actions to reduce permitting and licensing backlogs and the processing times of in-progress applications administered by Development, Buildings and Licensing (“DBL”).
- These recommendations have been prepared pursuant to direction provided by Council on March 31, 2021 to form an Internal Development Application and Permitting Modernization Task Force (“Task Force”).
- The Task Force was created to address current service levels and growing backlogs and has curated a significant list of opportunities which are being evaluated for assessment of impact, risk and benefit with priority given to smaller scale projects that are quick to implement and can target large blocks of the existing backlog. In that same motion, Council directed staff to report back on a bi-monthly basis with recommendations and updates.
Climate implications
- Renovation work in existing buildings can trigger requirements for unrelated safety and energy upgrades.
- While the changes recommended in this report will result in fewer energy upgrades, this will not have a substantive impact on the City’s Climate Emergency target to reduce carbon pollution from existing buildings by 50% by 2030.
- The recommended measures are temporary in nature, limited in scope, and do not typically result in substantive changes to the building’s overall carbon emissions.
- Further, Council has directed staff to advance recommendations to replace these energy upgrade requirements that are triggered by buildings renovations with carbon pollution limits.
- The proposed limits will be designed to catalyse building owners to plan and implement systematic changes to their building that will substantively reduce emissions over time.