The municipality of Utrecht has to pay almost 1 million euros in penalty payments to a resident of the city, because they did not receive an answer to objections in time. The man has lodged 120 appeals in court against the Utrecht college, because time and again it responded too late or not at all to his objections.
The legal battle between the city council and the Utrecht objector started in December 2017, when inspectors from the municipality determined that a building belonging to the objector and his neighbor was in an unsafe situation. The owners and the municipality did not agree on what should be done with the property, after which the Utrecht man lodged an objection and (Wob and Woo) submitted requests. He filed an appeal every time he disagreed with a decision. The response from the municipality was too slow or not at all.
In 2020, the objector tried through the court to force the municipality to respond to the objections. Even after the judge had imposed this, it still happened that the Utrecht Board did not respond to the man’s notice of objection. He sometimes appealed four times in the same case, causing the requests to pile up. In total, the Central Netherlands District Court ruled in 120 of the man’s appeals. To date, Utrecht has yet to respond to 33 objections.
Large number of requests
The municipality says in a response that there were a large number of objections, which made it impossible to respond in time. The college would not say what the content of the requests was. The college writes in a letter to council that it has been “inadequate alert”. In a comment to NRC says a municipal spokesperson that he “greatly” regrets this.
A decision period of six weeks applies to most objections. If a government agency does not make a decision in time, the citizen is entitled to a penalty. The counter for the municipality now stands at approximately 735,000 euros in penalties in enforcement and licensing cases, and approximately 195,000 euros must be paid in cases about the disclosure of documents. The man said in court that he is not after money. He wants the college to make decisions about his objections. The court must have done this by the end of September, the court says.
The court finds that as a result of the fines imposed, a large amount of public money now ends up with a single citizen, without the financial incentive having resulted in faster decisions. This gives the court an ‘uncomfortable feeling’. “If a government agency acts unlawfully for so long, and if even large sums of money do not help to stop that unlawful act, what will help?”