Tamil Nadu amends building rules to boost private industrial park projects

CHENNAI: To promote manufacturing-led growth in Tamil Nadu, the State Housing and Urban Development Department has amended the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building Rules (TNCDBR), 2019, to bring industrial parks developed by private developers under the purview of the rules.

This would be applicable only to private industrial parks that is spread on a minimum of 100 acres, where manufacturing is the primary activity. The area allocated for manufacturing units should be at least 50 per cent of the total built up area and the processing area should be the area occupied by industrial plants for manufacturing, ready-built sheds for industrial use, research and development centres, testing and certification centres, and pathways and roads, said the government order issued in this regard.

The parks should accommodate facilities for at least 10 different manufacturing entities. While there are several private IT and logistics parks, there are no industrial parks developed by the private sector in Tamil Nadu.

Through the amendment, the Housing and Urban Development Department, for the first time, has brought the industrial parks developed by the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Sipcot), Tamil Nadu Small Industries Development Corporation Limited (Sidco), Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco), Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (Elcot), TIDEL Park, TIDEL Neo and Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar Housing and Development Corporation Limited (TAHDCO) and others under the building rules. But these agencies should hold at least 25 per cent of the equity in the project to be treated as a government project.

While ensuring that the industrial parks are developed as per the building rules, the department has increased the mandatory road width for establishing green, orange, and red category industries to nine metres from the earlier seven. But, the road width norm for cottage industries will remain at seven meters.

Also, the permissible floor space index (FSI) for all category industries has been increased to 2 FSI from 1.5 FSI to allow taller industrial buildings.

Amendments have also been made to remove height restriction for high-rise industrial buildings constructed on roads that have a minimum width of 30 metres on a plot size of 4,000 sqm and above, subject to clearance by Airport Authority of India.

For high-rise industrial buildings in industrial parks, the maximum permissible FSI is up to 4.875 and for buildings on industrial plots, the maximum FSI is 6, if the minimum road width is 12 metres in both cases.

Under the new amendment, the maximum permissible FSI for commercial high-rise buildings in transit-oriented development (ToD) area with a maximum road width of 12 metres for a plot size of 3,000 sqm has been increased to 6.075 from the normal permissible FSI of 3.25.