take greater care of the development control issue. Finally, the new Act has to be simpler and
more transparent. An Act of Parliament must be clear and unambiguous. One of the objectives
of this revision is therefore to produce a reader-friendly document with clear-cut procedures
and transparent legal protection. Alignment with the General Administration Act is an
important factor in achieving this, thereby helping to streamline and simplify procedures and
guarantee public involvement and legal protection. Lastly, attention is paid to various
procedures used for environmental plans drawn up by the provincial executives.
The proposed planning system is less complex: the two main planning documents will be a
strategic plan and a legally binding plan. The distinction between policy statements and
statements that are legally binding will be made more clear. The strategic and indicative
policy is set out in policy documents (structure visions: structuurvisies); the legally binding,
prescriptive policy is set out in the land-use plans. In addition to these, general prescriptions
of the provinces and the central government are introduced. In the structure vision, an integral
outline must be given of the desired spatial developments for a particular area and direction
must be given to the relevant spatial policy for the (everyday) surroundings. The Draft Bill
makes it clear that, under the new Act, the central government, province, city-region, and the
local authorities will all have the competence to set up structure visions. These come in the
place of the national key planning decision, the regional plan, and the municipal structure plan
from the current Spatial Planning Act. The new structure vision is a policy document without
any legally binding elements, in which the administrative body that establishes it aligns itself
with a vision of the desired spatial development in a particular area. In the draft bill, originally
structure visions were not mandatory. However, in the last governmental amendment, based
on the opinion of the Dutch parliament, structure visions were made mandatory.
In contrast with the former Spatial Planning Act, the competence to draw up a land-use plan
will also be available to the central government and the province. This competence will
provide these government levels (in addition to the competence of setting up general
regulations) with an extra opportunity to establish elements of spatial planning that are of
provincial or national importance. In addition, the procedure of this plan will be changed. The
retrospective validation of the land-use plan at the provincial level has also been discontinued.
This validation has been replaced by an official recognition moment for the province and the
central government in the land-use plan procedure itself, and the competence of higher level
government authorities to set preconditions or quality requirements that the land-use plans
must satisfy, make specific alterations, and formulate a land-use plan directly. Measures are
also taken to keep land-use plans up-to-date. A simple update-declaration is introduced for
unchanged policy, as well as a less complicated revision procedure and penalties for not
updating land-use plans every ten years. The digitization of land-use plan will also be
stimulated.
The independent project procedure was originally abolished in the Draft Bill, because the
procedure time of the land-use plan will be shortened and the procedure simplified. However,
new insights - partly based on comments from lower level administrative bodies and the
private sector - have led to the introduction of a project procedure for the local authority,
province, and central government. This procedure involves an optional phased decision-
making process; the land-use plan has still to be quickly adapted, but the project procedure
can be the base for granting a building permission.
The Bill to revise (fundamentally) the current Spatial Planning Act was put before the Second
Chamber of Parliament in May 2003. In March 2005 a third document of amendments was