The Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Eng. Abdul Latif Al Sheikh, revealed details of the “Unified Procedural Guide” and the ”Technical Document for Implementing New Procedures for Residential Villa Building Permits,” which were prepared by a joint working group comprising the Ministry’s Agency for Technical Affairs, the Municipal Information Center, and several municipal secretariats, in order to achieve the second objective “facilitating the process of obtaining a residential villa building permit within an approved plan within a maximum of ten working days”—one of the objectives of the initiative to automate and streamline procedures, which is being implemented through the 2017 Targets Program.
This was stated in a circular issued by the Ministry to all municipal departments under its jurisdiction, as part of the implementation of the first phase of the 2020 Municipal Transformation Plan, which included the application and standardization of new building permit procedures within the 2017 Targets Implementation Program.
The unified procedural guide aims to define the minimum requirements for meeting municipal and technical requirements and conditions for obtaining permits to build residential villas within approved plans.
The unified procedural guide includes a checklist for residential villa requirements (detached residential villa, two adjacent villas, two attached villas), a residential villa project data form, general design requirements, a survey report form for the construction of a residential villa, a property owner’s declaration form, a declaration form for the engineering firm designing the project, an engineer’s review form from the Building Permits Department at the relevant municipal authority, as well as some illustrative drawings of residential villa construction systems.
Meanwhile, the “Technical Document for Implementing the New Procedures for Residential Villa Building Permits” included web services to link the municipal system with the Secretariat’s system to complete the workflow for issuing permits and notifications.
The Ministry noted that the model outlining the steps for issuing building permits applies only to all buildings within the Riyadh Municipality, while the model for residential villas applies to those within approved master plans in all other municipalities.
