Blaauwberg residents bring real accountability to the Big Bay LSDF

The Community Representation for Blaauwberg, or CRB, has been in the news several times over the past few years because of its opposition to Cape Town’s Big Bay Local Spatial Development Framework, known as the LSDF.

CRB has been consistent in its stance against the plan. Their main concerns are safety and the impact on local biodiversity, although other issues have also played a role. From the start, they warned that the LSDF could place between 10,000 and 25,000 new residents inside Koeberg’s nuclear evacuation zone without a proper evacuation plan.

The organization has been active in sharing its concerns with the public. In April 2025, GroundUp reported that residents were locked in a battle over the LSDF for Big Bay. CRB collected 1,600 survey responses opposing the plan. Michelle Collins, the chair of CRB, said the community was being “bulldozed” by the City and developers.

By September 2025, CRB published a press release highlighting the risks. They called the LSDF “reckless” and “unlawful” and said it violated national safety law. They demanded that housing not be approved without proper evacuation studies. A month later, in October 2025, CRB joined other civic groups in calling on the City to withdraw or extend the LSDF process. Collins said the public version of the LSDF was of poor quality and did not meet legal standards.

CRB continued pressing the City through reports, emails, and phone calls. Their efforts reached a climax on December 6, when 60 residents from Blaauwberg and nearby areas joined a protest. Collins told the press that the draft LSDF was incomplete, contradictory, and non-compliant with nuclear safety and biodiversity laws.

Despite all this work, the City remained largely apathetic to CRB’s concerns. It might have seemed that the effort was wasted, but CRB showed that when residents unite and focus on key decision makers, real accountability is possible. Their persistence finally paid off in March 2026, when the City stated that it will address issues raised through “studies” that, “will focus on traffic impacts and emergency evacuation requirements for suburbs within the 0–16km zone around the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.”