LETTER: Illegal builders in Surrey don\u2019t need \u2018education\u2019<\/p>\n
Published 9:00 am Sunday, May 17, 2026<\/p>\n
Editor:<\/p>\n
An open letter to Mayor Brenda Locke:<\/p>\n
Re: \u201cCouncil calls for more balanced enforcement of stop work <\/a>order<\/a>s\u201d, published in the Surrey Now-Leader, May 7<\/p>\n I am responding to this article. I have first-hand experience with illegal builds in my cul-de-sac. We have three on our street that has stop work orders posted on the property.<\/p>\n Mayor Locke wants the building permits process to go through more quickly than they are currently. She wants the property owners to be educated, fully informed and understand the permitting requirements.<\/p>\n I am going to refute this statement. These property owners know that they need building permits. Yet they don\u2019t comply and continue to build illegally, not building up to code.<\/p>\n Understanding the the rules and going through the process of building legally is not in their makeup or conscience. It doesn\u2019t exist. They know the loopholes to get away with it. In my personal opinion, bylaws need to demonstrate a firm fist and come down hard on these disrespectful property owners by giving them huge, expensive fines and do it in a timely manner or it\u2019s going to expand.<\/p>\n Linda Ypenburg, Surrey <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LETTER: Illegal builders in Surrey don\u2019t need \u2018education\u2019 Published 9:00 am Sunday, May 17, 2026 Editor: An open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-675914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}