infrastructure project, for example. In that case, local authorities can be forced to cooperate
because of the binding elements.
At the provincial level, the regional plan (streekplan) is the main instrument. This plan
contains strategic planning issues relevant for provincial policy. The plan can be made for the
whole area of a province, but in practice often smaller areas are covered. The necessary
approval of the local land-use plan by the province is of great importance in practice,
especially for rural areas. Nevertheless, central government planning policy is brought into
practice on the local level.
The local planning level is the most important. Here, the main planning instrument is the local
land-use plan (bestemmingsplan). This is the only plan which is legally binding on citizens
through the regulation of land use and prescriptions related to land use. A building permit can
only be granted if the proposal conforms to the land use and building prescriptions in the local
land-use plan. Besides the land-use plan, local authorities can also formulate a project plan for
individual projects. Such a plan is less comprehensive, but it is also legally binding; it
replaces the applicable land use regulation of the land use plan. The condition for the
establishment of such a plan is that it must be provided with a good spatial development basis.
Both the local land-use plan and the project plan have to be approved by the province. If the
central government does not agree with the proposed planning regulations, it has an
intervention procedure at its disposal. In addition to the local land-use plan, the local authority
has available the voluntary and indicative structure plan, but this plan is rarely used. Finally,
the seven city-regions draw up a mandatory regional structure plan.
Although the system includes opportunities for a higher government level to influence a lower
level land-use plan, these mechanisms are seldom used. The secret of successful planning lies
in extensive intra-governmental negotiation and consultation. The density of the discourse is
probably the most fundamental characteristic of spatial planning in the Netherlands. The
Compendium of European Planning Systems describes Dutch planning as one of the most
forthright examples of the ‘comprehensive integrated approach’; it comprises a formal
hierarchy of plans to coordinate public-sector activities in a range of fields from the national
level down to the local level. Plans are more concerned with the coordination of spatial than
of economic developments (EC, 1997).
5.2 Proposed changes in the Spatial Planning Act
The Spatial Planning Act has been amended several times since it first came into force in
1965. As a result, a patchwork of different instruments and different procedures was created.
We introduce some of the amendments before we discuss the recent proposal for a complete
revision of the Act.
The spatial planning key decision only received a legal basis in the Act in 1985 and the last
major alteration involved the independent project procedure for local authorities (referred to
as the Section 19 procedure). In addition, since the 1990s some decisions regarding planning
elements of national and provincial strategic planning documents were given a binding
character for other governments through jurisprudence. This binding character was formalized
in the Act in 2000. All in all, the law that has been established provides for many
eventualities, but it has also become extremely complicated and confusing in practice. Below
we briefly expand on three of these changes, namely the new city-region level and its plan
instrument, the procedure concerning projects of provincial and national importance, and the
project procedure mentioned above.