Ruimtelijke ordening op niveau: een juridisch onderzoek naar provinciale en nationale instructieregels op grond van hoofdstuk 4 van de Wro
In: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/306534
The research focuses on the relation between municipalities, provinces and the Crown in Dutch spatial planning law. Specifically, it concerns the power of the provinces and the Crown to issue general 'instructional rules' (instructieregels) concerning the content of municipal zoning plans and other planning decisions. This power, which can be found in Articles 4.1 and 4.3 of the Dutch Spatial Planning Act, is a new instrument in Dutch spatial planning and is of paramount importance for the possibility of municipalities to make autonomous decisions concerning the regulation of land-use. The research addresses the legal questions surrounding the use of this new instrument. Not only are the answers to these questions important to the actual practice of the use of the instrument, but also for the legislative bill proposing the new Environmental Law Act (Omgevingswet), currently pending in the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer), in which instructional rules play an important part. Instructional rules serve to set a framework aimed at policy impact. When setting spatial planning standards, lower-level administrative bodies only have discretionary powers (beslissingsvrijheid) within the provincial and national limits determined for the substance of the decision-making process, inter alia by instructional rules. This framework is set in order to ensure that the spatial-planning decisions taken at lower government levels comply with the policy as pursued by the regulatory government with respect to this setting of standards. Instructional rules have two legal effects. The first and main legal effect is that they must be taken into account by lower-level government authorities in their decision-making processes regarding spatial planning. The second legal effect is that instructional rules, based on the second paragraph of Article 4.1 and of Article 4.3 of SPA, respectively, may create the obligation for the municipal council to adopt a new land-use plan within a specified period. The SPA stipulates that an ...