Parklands residents say building approvals void after Nairobi misses court deadline

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Developers in Nairobi’s Parklands area face fresh uncertainty after the area’s residents’ association declared that development approvals issued since the middle of October are invalid, citing a court deadline that Nairobi City County was required to meet by October 14.

“Our ELC case and courts orders have come to effect from Oct 14th 2026,” the Parklands Residents Association said in a post on X on Thursday evening, under the heading “Development Permissions in Parklands Area Now Null and Void.”

What the court ordered

The claim rests on a judgment delivered on October 14, 2025 by a three-judge bench of the Environment and Land Court in Nairobi, made up of Principal Judge O. A. Angote and Justices A. Omollo and C. G. Mbogo. The petition was filed by the association’s chairman Kamalkumar Rajinkant Sanghani, Jags Kaur and Teddy Obiero on behalf of the association, which told the court it has more than 1,300 members.

The judges found that Nairobi City County had not set up a County Physical and Land Use Planning Consultative Forum, a body required under Section 14 of the Physical and Land Use Planning Act of 2019. They also found that the county’s handling of development in Parklands since August 2019 had breached residents’ rights to human dignity and to a clean and healthy environment.

The court gave the county six months to set up and run the forum and file a compliance report, and 12 months to prepare and gazette a County Physical and Land Use Development Plan and a local plan for Parklands. It then attached a penalty to both orders.

“An order be and is hereby issued that the failure by the Respondents to comply with the above orders (iv) and (v) will render any approvals after the lapse of 12 months null and void,” the judgment reads.

The 12 months ran out on October 14, 2026. The order does not list which kinds of approval it covers; it refers to “any approvals.” The county was also ordered to pay the costs of the case. The judges turned down the residents’ request for compensation, saying they had not proved any specific loss.

The county’s defence in court

During the case, Patrick Analo Akivaga, the county’s Chief Officer for Urban Development and Planning, told the court the county had prepared a draft Cabinet memorandum to set up the forum, which would be launched within four months of approval under a 12-month roadmap. He said a draft plan for Parklands was expected by the third quarter of 2025, and that the 2025/26 budget sent to the county assembly listed five local plans, including one for Parklands, at an estimated cost of KSh600 million.

A society of Nairobi property developers that joined the case argued that many of the projects under challenge were complete, occupied and fitted with services, and that halting them would hurt the public interest. It told the court the county’s 2021 development control policy allows buildings of 15 to 20 floors in the zones that cover Parklands.

The public court record does not show whether the county filed the compliance report the judgment required.

Contempt proceedings

The planning dispute has run alongside contempt proceedings in the same case. A later ruling dated April 30, 2026 records that the court found Geoffrey Mosiria in contempt on October 14, 2025 for disobeying orders issued in March that year, and that Mosiria then applied for that finding to be reviewed and set aside.

In the April ruling, the bench ordered Akivaga, Mosiria and advocate Collins Githuku to appear for cross-examination on matters arising from Mosiria’s application.

The Parklands fight comes as building safety in the capital is under scrutiny. On Friday, four workers were hurt when a building on Moi Avenue collapsed during demolition.