1. Who may legally practise as a town planner
Town planning is a regulated profession in South Africa. The South African Council for Planners (SACPLAN) is the statutory body established under the Planning Profession Act, 2002, and it decides who may practise. A person who is not registered with SACPLAN may not hold themselves out as a planner or take professional responsibility for planning work.
This matters commercially as well as legally. A municipality can reject an application prepared by an unregistered person, and there is no professional recourse when the work is wrong. Before you appoint anyone, ask for their registration number and category.
- Pr. Pln
Professional Planner
Full registration. May take professional responsibility for a planning application in their own name.
- Tch. Pln
Technical Planner
Registered at technical level, working within a defined scope of practice.
- Candidate
Candidate Planner
Registered while accumulating the supervised experience required for professional registration. Works under the supervision of a registered professional.
How to verify a registration
SACPLAN's old self-service verify-by-number page has been retired. To confirm someone's registration today, email the Council with the registration number at planner@sacplan.co.za. The Council's official site is sacplan.org.za.
Landlodz works with registered and verified town planners - every planner's SACPLAN registration is confirmed and kept current.
2. Where each municipality publishes its zoning map
8 municipalitiesA registered planner still needs to read the scheme, but the free public viewers below are enough to establish what a property is zoned before you spend anything. Only confirmed URLs are linked - where we could not verify a stable address, the entry says so instead.
Online Maps, run by the City's Corporate Geo-Informatics department. Choose "Free Access" - the free tier returns zoning, erf number, address, proposed township status and property boundaries.
The City's EGIS viewer. Zoning is a layer you switch on; overlays (heritage, urban edge, floodline) are separate layers again.
Maps and GIS landing page hosting the e-GIS Viewer. You must accept the City's terms and conditions on the landing page before the viewer tiles unlock. Confirmed reachable 17 September 2026 - Tshwane's GIS host names have changed before, so re-check periodically.
Ekurhuleni
Open the official viewerThe metro's public GIS portal.
eThekwini
Our eThekwini walkthrougheThekwini publishes its zoning through the municipality's GIS service. Our walkthrough covers how to search it and how to read a Durban zoning result.
The metro publishes a Metro Web Map, confirmed to exist. We have not verified a stable direct URL, so we are not linking one - use our walkthrough, or contact the metro's planning department directly.
Buffalo City
No public viewerNo confirmed public zoning viewer. Zoning enquiries go to the metro's planning department directly.
Mangaung
No public viewerNo confirmed public zoning viewer. Zoning enquiries go to the metro's planning department directly.
3. Land use schemes and municipal planning by-laws
The viewer tells you the category. The scheme tells you what the category permits, and the by-law tells you how to apply to change it. Both documents govern every application - and both are amended more often than most owners expect, which is why an out-of-date scheme extract is a common cause of a rejected application.
City of Cape Town
- Municipal Planning By-Law, 2015, with amendments in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2025
- Development Management Scheme (Schedule 3 to the by-law)
The 2025 amendment is the one that renamed the Single Residential and General Residential categories (SR1 became R1) with effect from 1 October 2025.
City of Johannesburg
- City of Johannesburg Municipal Planning By-Law, 2024 (commenced 3 April 2024, repromulgating the 2016 by-law)
- City of Johannesburg Land Use Scheme, 2018 (in force since February 2019 under SPLUMA)
The by-law was reviewed and repromulgated on 3 April 2024 in Provincial Gazette 117; material citing the 2016 by-law is out of date. Separately, the City opened a public review of the underlying Land Use Scheme, 2018 in March 2024, with the comment period closing 4 April 2024 - the outcome of that scheme review is not confirmed and should be treated as unresolved. A scheme review and a by-law repromulgation are different things, and only the by-law is confirmed finalised.
City of Tshwane
- Tshwane Land Use Scheme, 2024 (supersedes the Tshwane Town-Planning Scheme, 2008)
- City of Tshwane Land Use Management By-Law, 2016 (Amended 2024)
Both documents are listed on the City's planning documents page. Material published before 2024 that refers to the 2008 scheme is out of date.
eThekwini
- eThekwini planning by-law and town planning scheme
Link pending - Confirmed to exist - referenced in the municipality's own 2026/27 tariff tables - but we have not sourced a direct document link. Link pending; not guessing a URL.
Ekurhuleni
- Ekurhuleni planning by-law and town planning scheme
Link pending - Confirmed to exist - referenced in the metro's own Schedule 20: City Planning Tariffs 2026-27 - but we have not sourced a direct document link. Link pending; not guessing a URL.
Every official document, metro by metro
For the four largest metros we maintain a single page per municipality gathering the scheme, the by-law and every amendment, the application forms and the related policy documents - each cited to its publisher, with anything unconfirmed left unlinked and flagged.
- City of Cape Town planning documents
Three documents govern a land use application in Cape Town: the Municipal Planning By-Law, 2015, which sets out how you apply; the Development Management Scheme, which is Schedule 3 to that by-law and sets out what each zoning permits; and the City's own application forms, which must be the current versions.
- City of Johannesburg planning documents
Johannesburg's planning by-law was reviewed and repromulgated on 3 April 2024 in Provincial Gazette 117. Anything still citing the 2016 by-law - including a good deal of professional material online - is out of date.
- City of Tshwane planning documents
The Tshwane Land Use Scheme, 2024 supersedes the Tshwane Town-Planning Scheme, 2008. Advice, templates and online material still written around the 2008 scheme describe a document that no longer governs, and that is the single most common source of error on a Tshwane file.
- eThekwini Municipality planning documents
eThekwini differs from the other metros in a way that catches people out: it does not run one unified land use scheme. The municipality is covered by five regional land use schemes - Central, Inner-West, North, Outer-West and South - each reviewed separately.
Ekurhuleni - pending. We have not published an Ekurhuleni document hub. Gazette notices from 2021 still cite the Ekurhuleni Town Planning Scheme, 2014 as operative, while a document titled City of Ekurhuleni Land Use Scheme, 2021 also exists. Until that is settled from a clean source we are not naming an operative scheme. The metro's Spatial Planning and Land Use Management By-Law, 2019 is separately confirmed and published by the metro here.
4. What the municipality charges to lodge the application
Once you know the zoning, which scheme governs it and who is qualified to act for you, the remaining question is cost - and there are two separate costs. The municipality charges a lodgement fee set by its own approved tariff schedule, and the registered planner charges professional fees for preparing the application.
We maintain a sourced comparison of the published municipal lodgement fees across Cape Town, Johannesburg, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni and Mbombela for the 2026/27 financial year, with each figure cited to the municipality's own tariff document. The spread is wide enough to matter: a rezoning runs from R3,465 in eThekwini for a small erf to R15,644 per erf in Mbombela.
Compare the published municipal fees
Rezoning, consent use, subdivision, consolidation, removal of restrictive conditions, zoning certificates, building line relaxations, township establishment, gazette publication and appeals - every figure cited to its source document.
Reviewed September 2026. Municipal GIS addresses and document locations change without notice; entries marked as unverified or pending are deliberately left unlinked rather than guessed. SACPLAN registration categories per the Planning Profession Act, 2002.