If the cabinet introduces the Environment Act on 1 January 2023, this will probably lead to significant problems for permit granting, such as delays in construction projects. The government’s ICT watchdog, the Advisory Board for ICT Testing, warns of ‘social risks’ if Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Housing and Spatial Planning, CDA) sticks to the implementation date.
The advice published on Tuesday is yet another alarm signal about the Environment Act, which was devised twelve years ago to simplify spatial planning and associated procedures and permit granting. This is a major revision of the law, which has been postponed time and again in recent years. The Senate, which must be the last to approve the introduction, has previously announced that approval depends on the ICT advice that has now been issued.
The Advisory Board does not want to burn itself with the question of whether postponement is inevitable: that is ‘a difficult dilemma’. But the report is inexorable: if the government wants to opt for implementation in 2023 at all costs, it must act quickly to ‘limit social risks’.
Delay housing construction
The fear is that the granting of permits could come to a standstill if the systems do not work properly. For example, Neprom, the umbrella organization of project developers, recently called it “irresponsible” to introduce the law on January 1. Builders fear that housing construction could be delayed because the new system is not implemented flawlessly.
The suppliers of the software are also in doubt. And civil servants also appear to be concerned about the introduction: according to a poll by I&O Research and the civil servants’ trade magazine Domestic Governance in September, it emerged that seven out of ten municipal officials hope for another postponement.
The Advisory Board therefore writes that the sum of problems can sometimes lead to ‘the conclusion that the social risks of the Environment Act coming into force on or shortly after 1 January 2023 are too great’. In that case, according to the Commission, it is obvious that the cabinet will take considerable time to reconsider the law. It can then take years before the Environment and Planning Act is fully implemented.
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Problematic digital system
The major stumbling block is the digital system on which the Environment and Planning Act must run. This Digital System Environment Act (DSO) has been causing problems in design and testing for a long time.
In recent years, the Advisory Board has issued extremely critical advice on the DSO on several occasions. Since the last advisory report, there has still not been insufficient testing and the tests that have been done have been carried out “with insufficient quality”, the new report says. For example, according to the Advisory Board, insufficient tests were performed that included the entire permitting process from start to finish. “As a result, the program cannot sufficiently demonstrate the stability, reliability and technical functioning of DSO as of January 1, 2023.”
The Advisory Board also notes that many municipalities have meanwhile announced that they are using alternative solutions, whereby they want to temporarily use the old and the new way of granting permits side by side, in order to prevent problems. This should prevent the systems from failing, but “will come at the expense of user-friendliness, comprehensibility and usability”, according to the commission. Moreover, it is unclear whether permits drawn up in this way are legally valid.
The Senate will pronounce on the Environment Act in the coming weeks.
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