The amalgamation question has buzzed around in Victoria for years, the concept of whether the 13 separate municipalities that make of the capital regional district (aka Greater Victoria) should be unified in to 3 or 4 districts. Promoters of this movement have highlighted the advantage of reduced costs of running government services by merging and reducing staff, streamlining policy and reducing neighboring conflicts that would allow more freedom for business and development. A prime example within the construction industry that would feel effects of government amalgamation is the building permit application process.

Amalgamation’s Potential Effects

Municipal elections were held last weekend, and 8 of the municipal ballots included some form of question addressing the amalgamation topic and asking residents if they would be in support, with the majority answering yes. If an amalgamation were to occur, how would this impact the building permit process and would there be positive or negative results? How might this effect the cost of construction? The speed of processing applications?

Building permit application processing time varies significantly, the core communities of Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, and Esquimalt will generally have longer processing times than the outlying communities in the West Shore and Peninsula. The number of applications and staffing resources are key factors, as are local processes and code interpretation.

Financial Benefits for Consumers and Businesses

Amalgamating building departments would bring the code interpretation and process conflicts down, which would offer some relief on designers, engineers, and contractors to allow their methods from project to project to be more consistent, and efficient, which normally yields some amount of cost savings to the consumer, or greater profits for the proprietors, or hopefully somewhere in the middle where there is a financial benefit to both consumer and businesses.

The speed of processing applications would likely have more a varying outcome. The policies and practices of newly formed building departments would expectantly be dominated by the largest municipality coming in, so if the primary influencer’s processing time were longer than that of a joining district, there would be a negative result in the subordinate section. So if Esquimalt has a shorter typical processing time than Victoria, and Esquimalt and Victoria were to merge, then within the former Esquimalt section building permits would start taking longer to process. The reverse effect would also be available to occur, so some of the former district sections could increase their application processing rate if the dominant district they joined with was faster than them to begin with.

Potential Permitting Delays

Reduced staffing resources would not favor the agility of processing building permit applications, as it would be expected that the throughput of permit applications would remain about the same, and having fewer people to handle them would cause delays. Permit processing offices are usually at City Hall, and if the offices were centralized, inspectors would have longer travel times to construction sites, and the professionals that make in-person inquiries and application submittals would have longer travel times to visit the permit office, both causing for added time and a slow down in application processing rate.

Amalgamation in greater Victoria has been talked about for a long time, from the recent voice of public we might see some attempts made in 2018 to move in this direction, and then expect another 5 years or about until it would actually happen. So give it 9 years and the amalgamation effects on building permit applications may start to appear, and be thankful if your address lands where the speed goes up and the costs go down.