National President of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP), Dr. Femi Olomola, has said that the draft Land Use Planning Report (LUPAR) would address 95 per cent of all problems related to lack of data, inadequate personnel and stress on development control in the built environment.
Besides, he said that the report would lead to a situations where government’s ministries, departments and agencies could rely on LUPAR in their decisionmaking processes. Olomola, said these during the institute’s 17th edition of the Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Programme (MCPDP) held in Kaduna, Kaduna State.
He said that a draft of the report would be made ready in time for NITP’s next national conference and annual general meeting (AGM) to be held in October in Ilorin, Kwara State. The two-day forum had: “Development of a Multi User Template for Land Use Planning and Analysis Reporting (LUPAR) in Nigeria” as its theme. Kaduna’s MCPDP was the third and last leg in 2015. Olomola said “Be rest assured that a draft of the LUPAR will be prepared and made available in time for our next conference in Ilorin in October.
All suggestions, comments, observations and corrections made during this MCPDP and the previous ones in Port Harcourt and Ibadan will between now and October be looked into and possibly adopted so that we will have a robust LUPAR to present to a full house of the NITP in Ilorin,” Olomola said.
While describing LUPAR as a novelty that seeks to expand the frontiers of Site Analysis Report (SAR) applications beyond the tradition of planning approvals, the NITP president submitted that the MCPDP is aimed at building consensus on the new template among the practitioners and to allow for inputs before the report will be presented in October. Conceived by the Femi Olomola-led administration, LUPAR will also build on the existing SAR processes and procedures, as well as adding details of geographic references and further information relating to building types and conditions, title deeds, the local land use and development setting and the permits granted on property.
The expanded areas of its application cut across various sectors of the economy, many of which have direct relevance to the financial sector and regulatory agencies. According to the town planners, the new format LUPAR, in addition to other benefits, can become a very useful and authentic instrument that supports applications for opening of corporate bank accounts, process bank loans, make requests for Insurance cover, and incorporate/ register new companies with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
