Official Community Plan - 2024 Update

Community Open House - Thank you to everyone who joined the open house hosted on April 18th.

Take the Survey at the bottom of this page to provide your input on the proposed amendments

March 27, 2024

The OCP is Lake Country’s roadmap for the future. It provides guidance on how neighbourhoods and employment areas will grow and change within the District. More specifically, an OCP sets the strategic vision for the community, addressing land use, housing, transportation, economic growth, and environmental preservation. The OCP serves as a framework for growth, and making decisions about zoning, development permits, and infrastructure investments.

The current Lake Country OCP (Bylaw 1065, 2018) needs a set of amendments to ensure best practices for Development Permit approvals. The overall objectives of these amendments include improving the clarity, transparency and process improvements for development approvals, as well as ensuring adherence to provincial legislative requirements. All OCP amendments involve public input to ensure the community’s aspirations and needs are considered.

Legislated Requirements

Local governments in British Columbia are granted the authority to adopt an OCP under the Local Government Act (LGA), which stipulates what must be included the OCP. Specifically, section 488 of the legislation describes the specific conditions on when a municipality can exempt a development proposal from requiring a Development Permit. These conditions must be clearly spelled-out by reading the OCP, to determine whether a DP exemption is available. For example, there might be a DP exemption from a Natural Environment DP Area for a new building constructed entirely within the footprint of an existing building (that is to be demolished). One of the main purposes of these amendments is to make sure that these legislative requirements are very clear for when an exemption for a Development Permit can be obtained (without staff approval or Council approval).

Streamlined Development Approvals Process

The current Lake Country OCP contains 11 Development Permit Areas (DPA's) that are displayed on 14 different maps and contained within 79 pages of the OCP. These DPA’s are:

• Agricultural DPA;
• Multiple Unit DPA;
• Town Center Commercial DPA;
• Commercial DPA;
• Agri-Tourism Accommodation DPA.
• Industrial DPA;
• Natural Environment DPA;
• Hillside DPA;
• Stability, Erosion and Drainage Hazard DPA (4 maps)
• Wildland Fire DPA;
• Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Resource Conservation DPA;

When Planning staff receive an application for development, they must review the development proposal information against all of the applicable DPA’s to ensure that all the policies and regulations are being adhered to. Through the experience of Planning staff, this review process is extremely onerous, time consuming, and causes significant delays to application timelines. Staff are suggesting in these amendments that the existing vision and values described in the OCP can still be maintained, but also the Development approvals process can be streamlined through rewording and integrating the principles of the Greenhouse Gas DPA, the Agri-Tourism DPA, and the Hillside DPA into the 8 remaining DPA’s. The Greenhouse Gas DPA, the Agri-Tourism DPA, and the Hillside DPA would subsequently be eliminated through these OCP amendments.