KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 2 — A landmark High Court judgment has dismantled a decades-old bureaucratic hurdle in the construction industry, a move that could make the process of getting planning applications approved both cheaper and faster for property owners.
The court ruled that local authorities cannot prohibit architects from submitting planning applications, declaring the common practice of restricting such submissions exclusively to registered town planners to be illegal and unenforceable.
The Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM) hailed the decision as a critical step in cutting unnecessary red tape.
For decades, some local authorities have used internal circulars to block architects from making planning submissions, which the court’s ruling struck down as unlawful.
This forced property owners, from homeowners planning a simple renovation to large-scale developers, to incur the extra cost of hiring a town planner to merely “endorse” or “rubber-stamp” plans that their architect had already prepared.
PAM president Adrianta Aziz called the judgment a “win for common sense and the ‘ease of doing business’ in Malaysia.”
“It is counter-productive to impose additional layers of red tape on developments that already sit within an approved Local Plan,” he said in a statement.
Following the ruling, PAM has officially written to all mayors and local authority heads nationwide, urging them to immediately align their procedures with the law.
The ruling also clarifies the crucial issue of legal responsibility.
As the “principal submitting person,” the architect is the one legally liable for a project’s safety and compliance from start to finish.
“It is illogical to force a homeowner to hire a town planner for planning submission when the town planner holds no liability,” said PAM deputy president Dexter Koh.
“Restoring our right to submit planning applications eliminates a futile layer of bureaucracy.”
The judgment was delivered in the case of Spatial Design Architects Sdn Bhd v Majlis Perbandaran Klang & Ors.
