A Bill that would have ended Parliament's vote on every planning regulation in the Cayman Islands passed on 5 October 2026 with that clause reversed, after Planning Minister Jay Ebanks MP told the House that calls from a former MP, other former politicians, lawyers and a talk-show host had persuaded the Government to leave the power where it is.

The Development and Planning (Amendment) Bill, 2026, as gazetted on 31 August, had two purposes: to repeal the requirement that planning regulations be approved by a resolution of Parliament before they are made, and to let Cabinet waive building permit fees as well as planning application fees. The first was cut back in Committee on 5 October to building code regulations alone. The second passed unchanged. The Bill was read a third time on a voice vote that afternoon.

The outcome leaves Parliament's approval in place for the regulations that set zoning, building heights, setbacks, density and parking across Grand Cayman, while giving Cabinet a fee-waiver discretion that the Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Hew MP, said had arrived with "way too many more questions than answers".

What the Bill said, and what it now says

Section 42(3) of the Development and Planning Act (2021 Revision) provides that "No regulations shall be made pursuant to this Act unless a draft thereof has been laid before the Cayman Islands Parliament and a resolution approving the draft has been passed by the Cayman Islands Parliament." Clause 2 of the Bill, as published in Supplement No. 1 to Legislation Gazette No. 43, repealed that subsection outright. The Bill's long title described its object as providing "that regulations made under the Act will no longer be subject to the affirmative resolution of the Parliament".

Clause 3 amends section 53(2) of the Act, which currently lets Cabinet "in any particular case, waive or order the refund of any fee prescribed in Schedule 1" to the Development and Planning Regulations, by substituting "Schedules 1 and 2". Schedule 1 sets planning application fees; Schedule 2 sets building permit fees. Section 53(3) already allows Cabinet to delegate that power to a Minister.

The affirmative resolution procedure was used as recently as May this year. The most recent planning regulations, the Development and Planning (Amendment) Regulations, 2026, were brought to Parliament by Mr Ebanks at the Fifth Meeting of the 2025-2026 Session at the end of April, approved by the House, and gazetted on 12 May 2026 as Supplementary Legislation No. 26 of 2026. The Ministry described them at the time as addressing development standards and subdivision road requirements in support of "clearer decision-making, public safety, infrastructure capacity and orderly development". Under the Bill as gazetted, the next set would have gone from Cabinet to the Gazette without that stop.

On 5 October, Nickolas DaCosta MP, Minister for District Administration and Home Affairs, who answered for the Planning Ministry during that sitting, moved the Committee-stage amendment as acting Minister for Planning. It deleted clause 2 and replaced it with a new section 42(3) reading, as moved: "With the exception of building code regulations, no regulations shall be made pursuant to this Act unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before the Parliament and a resolution approving the draft has been passed by the Parliament." A new subsection 3A provides that a building code may apply codes and standards "as adopted by the building official and published in the Gazette", together with any amendments or repeal of them.

Asked by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Kenneth Bryan MP, to confirm that the amendment meant any change to the regulations would still need Parliament's approval, and which fee areas it would focus on, Mr DaCosta said he had been reliably informed that all regulations must be approved by Parliament except those pertaining to building codes. Asked by Christopher Saunders MP, the independent member for Bodden Town West, whether building heights fall within the building code, Mr DaCosta said no: the building code regulations carry an attachment of allowable heights and areas "in terms of life safety but not in terms of the massing and scaling", which he said remain governed by the Development and Planning Act and its regulations. The Act, he said, would supersede the building code regulations, and the heights table in the code was an attachment rather than the place where height is regulated. The exchange matters because the planning regulations, not the building code, fix the storey limits that apply in each zone, and those remain subject to Parliament's vote.

Clause 3, the fee-waiver clause, passed without amendment. The Chair then put the Bill's long title as printed, which still describes regulations as no longer being subject to Parliament's affirmative resolution, and it was agreed without a change.

"The intention was to pull the planning regulations out of Parliament oversight"

Moving the second reading on 2 October, Mr Ebanks described the Bill's original design. "To be entirely frank with the House," he said, "the intention was to pull the planning regulations out of Parliament oversight so that Cabinet could deal with them directly and more swiftly." Instead, he told members, the Government would bring a Committee-stage amendment confining the change to building code regulations, so that Cabinet could respond to new construction methods and local conditions without every minor technical update waiting for Parliament time.

He said the Government had looked at the clause as a way to "move the development plan a lot faster", a plan he said had been "coming for too long" and was now "very, very close", with the Planning Statement to be laid, he hoped, at the next sitting. He then described the calls that changed its mind. "I had a few individuals call me and say, 'Jay, you have to be very careful.' It may not be you but somebody else coming behind you may make the changes." The first caller, he said, was a former MP and friend who set out the history behind the requirement and insisted on a face-to-face meeting; others followed from "previous politicians", from "one of the local talk show hosts" who said this was the section the public had raised with them, and from "a few of my trusted lawyers". All of them, he said, told him the requirement should stay in Parliament. "So the Government decided that all of the development planning regulations, when it comes to the use of development, the rights for your neighbourhoods, to how we shape our islands, those must stay in Parliament here."

The Minister tied the building code carve-out to a new Cayman Islands Building Code, drafted with the International Code Council on the Council's 2021 codes with Cayman-specific amendments, which he said the Ministry expects to bring into effect in January 2027 in electronic and printed form, replacing the overseas codes Cayman has referenced until now. He said the Council would present Cayman with an award "in the next week" for leading the Caribbean on building codes.

The fee waiver, and who gets it

On clause 3, Mr Ebanks said the extension of Cabinet's waiver power to building permit fees would give Cabinet a discretion to provide targeted financial relief when people need it most, and linked it to the Public and Affordable Housing Policy and 10-Year Strategic Plan tabled earlier this year. He described "the average Caymanian" who comes to a representative "trying to build a home out of his pocket" but cannot find "that first 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 dollars" in fees before a permit is issued. "Now Cabinet will be able to help individuals that fall in that situation," he said, adding that it was not a promise that every application would receive a waiver and that the discretion had to be exercised carefully and in accordance with the law. He said he would leave the design of any policy on fee waivers to the Minister of Finance.

Under the fee schedules in force, a 1,800-square-foot house attracts a planning application fee of CI$450 under Schedule 1, at 25 cents a square foot, and a building permit fee under Schedule 2 of CI$720 in Area B, which covers most of Grand Cayman and Little Cayman, or CI$1,350 in Area A, which Schedule 2 defines block by block and which takes in listed parcels in West Bay, George Town, Bodden Town, North Side and East End. A house of 1,200 square feet or less pays a flat permit fee of CI$100 in Area A and CI$50 in Area B. Apartment and townhouse permits are charged at CI$1.75 a square foot in Area B and CI$2.50 in Area A, and hotels, offices and shops at CI$3. The Bill places no limit on the type of development whose permit fees Cabinet may waive, and the Minister did not say which fees make up the CI$3,000 to CI$5,000 he described.

Mr Hew, whose Private Member's Motion No. 8 of 2023-2024 asking the Government to consider "developing and incentivising more private sector-built affordable home ownership schemes and home rental schemes" was passed by Parliament on 21 September 2023, said the Opposition supported the retreat on clause 2 but had "real concerns about the execution" of clause 3. The Ministry's press release had presented the waiver as a tool for affordable housing, he said, yet the Bill set no definition of an affordable home, no eligibility rule, no penalty and no requirement that a home built with waived fees stay affordable or be held for any period. He pointed to regulation 7 of the Development and Planning Regulations, which already lets Cabinet designate a development of "one or more low cost dwelling units" as a Government-approved low cost housing programme, and said the Government could have amended that regulation to build a programme with criteria that Parliament could examine. "At its outset, on first glance, it just looks like a free-for-all," he said. "If there is going to be regulations, which perhaps should have come with this, that we could have seen how fee waivers would be handled, what is the criteria, what are the penalties, then it would have made it much more easier for us to accept it."

Replying, Mr Ebanks said he understood the concern and that the power "isn't for the next person that's looking to build a bank", but repeated that policy on the waivers was for the Ministry of Finance to craft. The second reading passed by voice vote. No other member spoke.

How the Bill got here

The Ministry of Planning, Lands, Agriculture, Housing and Infrastructure announced the Bill on 27 August, saying it would be gazetted the next day and describing it as "technical in nature" but "an important part of the wider housing delivery framework". The release said the Bill sought "to adjust the regulation-making process under the Act to ensure Cabinet has the necessary full authority to make amendments and consider fee waivers, where appropriate, in support of approved public policy objectives, including housing-related priorities". Mr Ebanks was quoted as saying: "Housing reform is not achieved through one Bill, one policy or one programme. It requires the right tools, the right systems and the discipline to deliver in the proper sequence." The Bill appeared in the Legislation Gazette on 31 August.

It was the second Development and Planning (Amendment) Bill of the year. Mr Saunders filed a private member's Bill of the same name, gazetted on 1 April, which would have given planning applicants a statutory presumption in favour of permission where a proposal accorded with the Development Plan, and would have allowed Cabinet or Parliament to require the Central Planning Authority to bring forward plan amendments outside the normal approval process. The Government's summary of the 30 April sitting records that Mr Saunders asked to withdraw it "to extend the consultation period so the Government could work on addressing some concerns", and that the House agreed.

The Government's Bill reached the Order Paper for second reading on 1 October, was debated and given its second reading on 2 October, and completed Committee, report and third reading on 5 October. The Government's published summary of that sitting, issued on 6 October, lists it among eight Bills passed and records that "Amendments were made to the Notaries Public, Tobacco, Local Companies (Control) and Development and Planning Bills", without saying what the amendments were. The Environmental Health Bill and the Public Health Bill, on the same Order Paper, were withdrawn on 2 October by Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP for further amendment after consultation.

What happens next

The Bill as gazetted carries no commencement clause. Once the amended Act is in force, Cabinet may waive or refund any building permit fee in Schedule 2 in any particular case, and may delegate that power to a Minister under section 53(3). No policy, criteria or publication requirement accompanies the power in the Act. Mr Ebanks said the Minister of Finance, Rolston Anglin MP, would set the policy, and no timetable for that policy was given to the House.

Building code regulations will be the only regulations under the Act that Cabinet can make without a prior vote of Parliament, and the new Cayman Islands Building Code, if it arrives in January 2027 as the Minister expects, will be the first instrument made under that exception. The regulations that decide what can be built where, and how high, still come to the House. The first test of the fee-waiver power will be whether the Ministry of Finance publishes criteria before Cabinet uses it, and whether the waivers it grants are made public.