Where Floodlines Enter a Land Development Application: SPLUMA and Your Land Use Scheme

The Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) does not mention floods, floodlines or watercourses anywhere. The floodline reaches a land development application in two other ways. For township establishment, section 144 of the National Water Act requires it on the layout plan. For rezoning, subdivision and other applications, the municipality’s land use scheme, planning by-law and application forms call for it. SPLUMA supplies the general principles that let a municipal planning tribunal refuse or condition an application on a flood-prone site.

Preparing a rezoning, subdivision or township application next to a river? We determine the floodlines the municipality asks for and show how they shape the layout before it is drawn.

Floodline determination

What SPLUMA says, and does not say

A full-text search of SPLUMA (Act 16 of 2013, as enacted) finds no “flood”, “inundation”, “watercourse”, “hazard”, “disaster” or “climate”. The provisions that matter for flood risk are general:

• Section 7, the development principles. Spatial sustainability includes promoting “land development in locations that are sustainable” and upholding “consistency of land use measures in accordance with environmental management instruments”. Spatial resilience means ensuring “sustainable livelihoods in communities most likely to suffer the impacts of economic and environmental shocks”.
• Section 12(1)(j). Every spatial development framework must “identify the long-term risks of particular spatial patterns of growth and development and the policies and strategies necessary to mitigate those risks”.
• Section 21(j). A municipal spatial development framework must include “a strategic assessment of the environmental pressures and opportunities”, including “the spatial location of environmental sensitivities”.
• Sections 24 and 25. A land use scheme must “take cognisance of any environmental management instrument” and comply with environmental legislation, and must promote “minimal impact on public health, the environment and natural resources”.
• Section 42. A municipal planning tribunal must be guided by the development principles, must consider “the state and impact of engineering services”, and, “when considering an application affecting the environment”, must “ensure compliance with environmental legislation”.

None of these requires a floodline. But together they let a tribunal treat flood risk as a planning consideration, and they tie the decision to the environmental and water laws that do address it.

Where the floodline requirement really comes from

Application	Where the floodline requirement comes from
Township establishment	Section 144 of the National Water Act: the 1:100-year line on the layout plan, everywhere. See section 144
Any application the municipality specifies	Land use schemes, for example Tshwane’s 2024 scheme, which can require the 1:50 and 1:100-year lines certified by a professional engineer
Township layouts in Polokwane	The planning by-law’s application form: both lines, certified, and not more than three years old
Land use applications in Nelson Mandela Bay	The application form lists a “flood line determination and/or report” as a supporting document
Building in flood-prone parts of an approved township	Land use scheme floodline clauses and section 10 of the Building Standards Act

Our post on floodline certificates lists more municipalities, and our city pages set out each municipality’s rules alongside its rivers.

The Western Cape is different

The Western Cape Land Use Planning Act (Act 3 of 2014, LUPA) is the one provincial planning law we found that names flooding. The principles in section 59, which guide land use planning in the province, include:

• identifying “areas unsuitable for development, including flood plains, steep slopes, wetlands and areas with a high water table”;
• ensuring “the safe utilisation of land” by “taking into consideration factors such as sea-level rise, storm surges, flooding, fire hazards and geological formations”;
• developing and considering climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in land use planning.

That gives decision-makers in the Western Cape an explicit basis to refuse or condition development in a flood plain. Cape Town’s floodplain policy then sets the detail; see our Cape Town page.

The other provinces

Several provinces have not yet passed SPLUMA-era planning laws to replace the old ordinances, and in others the position is unclear. A 2025 review in the Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal found that municipal by-laws “mostly preceded the needed and related provincial legislation, except for the Western Cape”. In practice, the municipal planning by-law and land use scheme set the procedure and the floodline requirements, whichever province you are in.

How to use this on an application

1. Read the municipality’s land use scheme for floodline, watercourse and buffer clauses, and its application forms for the supporting documents they list.
2. Determine the floodlines first, before the layout is drawn, so the layout, the open space and the services avoid the flood-prone land. See rezoning and subdivision near a river.
3. Run the other approvals in parallel: water use authorisation in the regulated area of a watercourse and environmental authorisation where the NEMA 32 m rule applies. The tribunal must ensure compliance with environmental legislation, so these approvals are best in hand, or clearly in progress, when the application is decided.

Our guide to every law that applies to a site near a river shows the full picture. See our floodline determination service, or send us the site and the application type.

This post explains the documents listed below. It is not legal advice; requirements change and are applied case by case, so confirm them with the relevant authority before relying on them.