No more Admin penalties for struggling ECD centres in Cape Town

The City of Cape Town has released a Draft Exemption from the Administrative Penalty for Certain ECD Centres in the City – and there is now a call for public comment.

Background:

To provide context, an ECD centre needing to comply with municipal by-laws and become registered as a partial care facility is required to obtain land use and building plan approvals. Before an application for these approvals can be considered, if an ECD centre located in the City of Cape Town operates without the necessary land use in place or approved building plan, the centre must first apply for and pay an administrative penalty.

The Penalty:

This penalty, which in our experience has ranged from R500 to R12,000, is a disincentive for ECD centres to become compliant and often penalises the centres attempting to operate legally as opposed to those who do not start the land use application process and so might never have to pay this penalty. The threat of this penalty can scare principals off. On the other hand, there are those ECD centres that do not know about this penalty and it comes as an unexpected expense to ECD centres trying to register and operate legally. Unfortunately, many ECD centres in Cape Town (and across South Africa) are not financially able to pay these penalty fees.

The City of Cape Town:

The Centre for Early Childhood Development (CECD) has been engaging with the City of Cape Town and the Mayor’s office around local barriers to ECD centre registration, including this requirement to pay an administrative penalty. The City of Cape Town is now proposing that ECD centres in certain areas (as per the City’s suggested map of areas) operating without the necessary land use in place or having built a structure without approved building plans, will be exempt from having to pay an administrative penalty before seeking these approvals – this is a win for the ECD community!

The Submission:

We (CECD) support the proposed exemption for ECD centres, however, we strongly suggest changes be made to the legal wording of the exemption to (a) ensure that all ECD centres in the suggested areas are automatically exempt from paying administrative penalties for both illegal land use and building work, and (b) remove potential conflict of interpretation/application of this exemption that could nonetheless require these centres to pay administrative penalties. Moreover, there are many poor areas which we think should be included in the list of exempted areas for ECD centres, that are not included on the proposed map.

How you can support this effort:

CECD has worked with lawyers and researchers to draft comments on this proposed exemption. You can support CECD’s comments, by submitting the email on this page.

If you submit this email, please add in your own personal comments on how being exempt from admin penalties could affect ECD centres/what it means to you. You can write a line or two after the words, “Personal comments”.

If you would like to submit your own comments, please consider including CECD’s changes that we strongly suggest should be considered. You can submit your own comments online, via this link: Feedback (capetown.gov.za) or you can send your comments via email to [email protected].

Important Links:

* The document with the proposed exemptions can be found here: https://bit.ly/42C2qZj

* The map illustrating the areas that the City is proposing should be exempt from an administrative penalty can be found here: https://bit.ly/41mzSlw

* The City of Cape Town’s webpage on this matter, with some additional information is here: https://bit.ly/3plBLBQ

The Impact:

If the current map of exempted areas proposed is implemented, it would impact a total of 1,085 centres; 38,924 children and 4,708 staff members. However, there are numerous more centres in poor communities that are not included in this proposed map. As such CECD has suggested a strategy to add additional suburbs in the City of Cape Town to the current map of exempted areas.

We encourage you to please use this opportunity and give your comments to the City of Cape Town. The number and content of the comments made on this exemption make a difference. This is a chance for us to have our voices heard. Let’s influence the process that affects us and change the law in a way that the rules and regulations support the ECD community.