After giving itself guaranteed permitting processing timelines in Fall 2021, the City of Surrey continues to see real progress in preventing unnecessary longer delays in approving housing and supporting businesses.
On Monday, City staff provided Surrey City Council with an update on the latest processing times. For each of the five different groups of guaranteed permitting processing timelines, the municipal government was able to stay within or below targets.
It should also be noted that while there is still a heavy volume of applications, their numbers have fallen in some categories compared to the same quarter in the previous year, possibly because of the current housing market slowdown.
For single-family dwelling permits, there was a processing time of 7.4 weeks in January 2023 — below the established guaranteed target of 10 weeks, but higher than 6.9 weeks during the fourth quarter of 2022.