Half a million building permits: are we going to sink or swim? What benefits you the most as a resident? Your municipality spending money on a safe living environment, employment and beautiful green landscaping? Or it spending money on issuing stacks of individual building permits when there is an alternative? The way things are now, every municipality has to issue separate building permits for each location and for each building that needs renovating. In the Netherlands, half a million applications are on the way. Are they ready for that? Briqs advocates a more systematic approach. Then, your municipality can spend its money on better things.
Energy (bill) through the roof!
What is it we are dealing with here? In the Netherlands we have five and a half million poorly insulated homes (label C to G) where the heat is flying through the roof and people are stuck with soaring energy bills. Something needs to be done about that, because we do not want energy to go to waste like that. So, we have to renovate and insulate extensively: (new) double glazed windows, sealing cracks, floor, wall and roof insulation, efficient systems for heating and ventilation, and so on. Once you interfere with the structure of the building or the exterior, you have to go to the municipality for a permit. For all locations where these houses are located, we are talking about half a million permits! Are we going to sink or swim?
Take a systematic approach, instead of project by project
Currently, such permits are granted project by project as if we are dealing with a new, one-time activity every time. Each permit has its own procedure. That’s because a permit for construction or reconstruction is linked to the specific building on that site in that municipality, as described in the land register. So for the renovation of the same property in another housing block or neighborhood, an officer must process a separate permit. And for the same type of home in one of the other four hundred municipalities in the Netherlands, completely different people process the same type of application from scratch.
While many homes from the 30s, 50s, 60s and 70s come from the same catalog. They were built by construction companies and sold to corporations, investors and individual buyers systematically. For all these buildings we could use a similar approach. It is absolute madness to tackle this job by way of projects! It is far better to work systematically with a nationwide permit where a local permit can refer to, of course with room for minor adjustments by site. With the publication of the local permits everyone knows what is going to happen, without many officials losing time over a technical check of it contents. When we deal with the permits systematically, your council can do other nice things with the time and money saved.
Take the next step and share your experiences
Do you want to take a next step? Come to the FREE* Masterclass. We will work with practical tools to instantly implement the actions of my ebook in your organizational, fiscal or financial projects and organization.
Join the conversation
Do you know how to build that new way and what you need? What experience do you have with permits for renovations? And what would a systematic approach to permitting bring you? Share it in the comments below.
To your health and wellbeing,
Remko Zuidema
[remko_author]
This post is also available in: Nederlands
