Planning Division

Understanding the Development Approval Process

How does a proposed development move through the City of West Palm Beach's review and approval process? The City has created a Development Approval Process guide to help residents, property owners and applicants better understand the steps involved in reviewing development proposals.

This guide provides an at-a-glance look at the different review paths a project may follow, from initial application and technical staff review to public hearings and final approval, when required. Because every project is different, the specific process depends on the type of project, its location, and the request being made. The City's development review process helps ensure proposals are evaluated for consistency with the City's Comprehensive Plan and applicable development regulations.

WPB-Development-Approval-Process.pdf(PDF, 277KB)

Thinking about a construction project and you're not sure where to start? Check out our Planning & Permitting Research Tool portal. This platform lets you plan out your proposed project by first checking if what you want to do meets current Zoning allowances, and then walks you through your potential project's scope of work and provides you with a list of the permits that would be required and provides a rough estimate of the permitting fees. At the end, create a report to save and use as a guide. NOTE: This guide is not an actual permit application.

When you're ready to start your project and you want to submit a permit application, move into our Civic Access permitting portal. 

EPL (Enterprise Permitting & Licensing) is our 100% digital online permitting platform while the Civic Access portal is the customer-facing side of EPL. Our EPL Guide and Information page contains PDF guides as well as YouTube walkthroughs on how to register for and use the Civic Access portal. We highly recommend spending some time getting to know the portal before you begin your permit application.

Use the Civic Access portal to manage your project - apply for permits, check your permit status, pay fees, resubmit for plan review, download your permit card and approved plans, schedule inspections, and more. In order to use the portal you must first register a profile. Already familiar with EPL? Click the link below to jump directly to the portal. 

Use this tool to look up existing plans, permits and inspections, and code enforcement case records by address. 

You can download the information you look up, or create notifications to be alerted when new records are created. If you want to obtain the actual case documents, submit a public records request here.