"Dutch building regulation is under construction. After the report of the commission “Fundamentele Verkenning Bouw” in 2008, several studies have been done on the principals that the commission outlined in its report. Local authorities and parties in construction were invited to start experiments with a more privatized system of building control. But this faced a lack of participation, partly due to the impact of the crisis."
The minister responsible for housing and construction invited in 2011 a Bouwteam to develop an agenda for action for construction. In 2012, 17 action teams started to focus, speed up and simplify the planning and development of construction. Recently, the two teams related to building regulation presented their plans. The first was a roadmap towards private building control, the second, a proposal for an independent body to answer questions on constructions plans that do intrinsically but not legally meet the standards of building regulation. There is considerable controversy regarding the way that this implementation team is paving its path towards private building control. While the minister for housing conformed himself to a subsidized private implementing team, the Dutch Parliament has expressed its own priorities for regulation: insured guarantee to protect users and owners, a role for local authorities regarding safety and acceptance of buildings and simplification of building regulation and control for simple construction works. The parliament held a round-table conference to get informed about private building control. Recently, a proposal by the minister for housing was discussed. Further debate will be needed to decide about the next steps in innovation building regulation, which will take place in the upcoming months. ERB/RIGO (Foundation Expert Centre Regulations in Building/Research Institute for Real Estate) have developed own proposals for the public-private relation regarding development and construction of buildings. They expect that their proposals might be of help. The proposals are laid down in several publications and partly realized in experimental development of to be approved technical solutions. This paper reflects on the differences between their proposals and these of the roadmap, on the possible outcome of the ongoing debate and its implications, legal and technical, on building regulation and on legal and contractual liability. This paper tries to give an inside view on the development of regulation and the pros and cons of the proposals, starting from a theoretical outline of building regulation .
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Nico P. M. Scholten (1) and Rob T.H. de Wildt (2)
1. Expertise Centrum Regelgeving Bouw (Foundation Expert Centre Regulations in Building), Delft 2628 CS, the Netherlands
2. RIGO (Research Institute for Real Estate) Research en Advies, Amsterdam 1011 AB, the Netherlands
