Ontario’s Planning Act and How You Can Respond Quickly

Featuring George Robinson, the Town of Kingsville’s Manager of Planning Services

On January 17, 2023, the Town of Kingsville’s Manager of Planning Services, George Robinson, joined our webinar Ontario’s Planning Act and How You Can Respond Quickly to share his perspective on how Cloudpermit has helped Kingsville’s planning department. Cloudpermit’s Product Managers Etye Sarner and Leslie Wright shared their expertise about how Cloudpermit can help planning departments respond to the new act, led attendees through a software demo, and hosted a Q&A.

Please find a summary of the act, key questions, and information below. Reach out to us for more insights from the webinar.

Ontario’s Planning Act, More Homes Built Faster:

On October 23, 2022, Ontario introduced Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster, and it received Royal Assent on November 28, 2022.

The bill includes substantial amendments to various acts and regulations, in hopes of reaching a target of 1.5 million residential homes built over the next 10 years. Nine legislative documents have been updated as a result. 

Key Takeaways from Bill 23:

• Elimination of planning responsibilities from certain upper-tier municipalities
• Removal of certain third-party appeals (consent and minor variance)
• Removal of site plan control for residential projects fewer than 10 units
• Freezing, reducing, and/or exempting certain development charges
• Elimination of the required two-year wait time or OPAs after an OP or secondary plan is passed
• Limiting exterior design as part of site plan control only to certain situations
• Requirement for “As of right” small scall residential uses of up to three units per lot in official plans and zoning by-laws
• Much more

Background on the Town of Kingsville:

• Beautiful community in Southwestern Ontario acting as a lower-tier in Essex County
• Population of approximately 21,00 residents
• Moved planning & development online in March 2022
• Building department also accepts applications online via Cloudpermit
• 41 planning applications and 630 building permit applications submitted via Cloudpermit

Where is the Town of Kingsville with the implementation of the Cloudpermit Planning & Development solution?

George Robinson, Kingsville’s Manager of Planning Services, shared that the Town rolled out Cloudpermit in phases: “So, what we did is we launched pre-submissions, official plan amendments, rezonings, and site plan control to start on the planning module”.

They also conducted extensive user testing, staff testing, and training on the minor variance and consent application features for their committee of adjustment.

Now, they plan to launch new application types, that are currently being internally tested, for the public by the end of January. 

What have your experiences with Cloudpermit been so far?

Sarner asked Robinson about his department’s approach to launching Cloudpermit in phases. Sarner prompted that Kingsville launched groups of similar application types together to allow their internal team and the public adjust to a new system in pieces, rather than all at once. 

Robinson shared that there was internal training to make sure everybody was familiar with Cloudpermit and its circulation functionalities. The small town transitioned from an old paper system that had staff members passing paper around to an online system that Robinson says is “working incredibly well”.

He continued:

I was expecting more pushback than we got. All of our in-town staff users are on it [Cloudpermit] now, and we’re all responding very quickly. It’s been great for our users, as well as for record retention purposes.”

Kingsville’s Manager of Planning Services shared that staff could look for final versions of documents in multiple places. Now, it’s all online.

Moving online has done wonders for communication with our staff and our clients, as well as all kinds of document retention and sharing. It’s been a great experience.”

What is the Town of Kingsville’s planning department doing to address Bill 23?

Cloudpermit’s Product Manager Sarner asked Robinson how Kingsville’s planning department will be prepared to respond to Bill 23.

Robinson explained that both Bill 23 and Bill 109 introduce new timelines, and they need to ensure no application fees are lost as a result.

We’re using Cloudpermit in a couple of different ways in order to make sure that we get complete applications that we can then take action on and take to council for approval,” added Robinson. “If anything comes in at an initial stage, and they’re not quite sure what kind of application they need, we’re getting them to do a pre-submission on Cloudpermit, which is a great process, which allows them to give us some documents.”

He continued that this allows staff to review all supporting studies or documentation with simple and online circulation. They also have programmed timelines into Cloudpermit to tell staff when applications are complete, and how many days are left to decide on an application. Cloudpermit’s circulation timer will be a big help to Kingsville as it will help staff keep on top of circulation comments that come in and send information to the council to get decisions made. 

Is there any other Cloudpermit feature that you think would help you adjust to Bill 23? 

We’ve gotten rid of all our paper files,” shared Robinson. “So, if an application is received through Cloudpermit, we treat that as the workspace, and we do all the communication and reviews in Cloudpermit. We keep a copy of things on our drive just for redundancy purposes, and then, long-term records keeping.”

He continued,

It’s really sped up our review times. Since we’ve converted to Cloudpermit, we’ve consecutively been able to issue draft approvals for site plans in less than 30 days, which is less than half of the timeline the province requires.”

Fees have also become easier with Cloudpermit. 

We’re able to pre-program all the fees every year. So, when our new fee by-law passes, I just put all the fees into Cloudpermit, and then they automatically populate based on application times, saving us time as well.”

What’s been the biggest challenge with adjusting to Bill 109 and Bill 23?

Staying on top of multiple iterations was a challenge.

Learn more about Robinson’s perspective in this video.