A Boundary Wall Permit: Sixteen Dinars, Six Undertakings, and the Engineering Office Is the Door

A wall around a plot is not free work. The municipality treats it as building: it has a licence, it has fees, and it has a file that opens only through an approved engineering office.

This is the map of the transaction as Kuwait Municipality publishes it in its transaction requirements.

The only door: an engineering office

The application is not submitted by the plot owner directly. It goes through the engineering office you have contracted with inside the engineering licensing system, accompanied by a signed agreement between you, and an engineering drawing from that same office and no other.

The paperwork

• A copy of the deed, or the allocation letter from housing.
• The owner’s civil ID, or a power of attorney for them.
• The agreement with the approved engineering office.
• The engineering drawing from that office.
• Approval for a new electricity connection.
• Form 4, and forms 2 and 3 for the engineering house.
• The form specifying the location of the house connection, for a plot facing more than one street.

Six undertakings

An undertaking is a document you commit to before the licence is issued, and here there are six:

• Maintaining and complying with the levels.
• Having read the “to whom it may concern” letter from the Public Authority for Housing Welfare.
• The structural design.
• The wall itself.
• Not claiming services — this one in the newer areas.
• Preserving the services.

The neighbouring condition

There is a clause many people miss: evidence must be attached that the plot owner or one of their relatives to the second degree owns private housing adjoining the plot. So the application looks not at the plot alone but at what surrounds it.

What happens after submission

• An engineer in the engineering licensing department — building control — studies the file.
• If an error or a departure from the building code is found, the drawings go back to the engineering office.
• Once the documents are complete and the drawing matches the building code, it is approved.
• The department director checks and approves.
• The fees are paid and the licence is issued.

The fees

• Building licence: five dinars.
• Survey drawing: one dinar.
• Supervision undertaking: ten dinars.

So sixteen dinars in total. The competent office follows the governorate of the area, as does the address where the transaction is completed.

Photo: a boundary wall being built from concrete blocks. By Kolforn, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: Kuwait Municipality, transactions guide — requirements for “issuing a boundary wall licence for private or model housing”.