Shifting responsibilities in building control in the Netherlands: a historical perspective

Abstract

Though building regulations underwent numerous developments in the Netherlands in the course of the twentieth century, responsibility for control remained more or less with the central government. Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, a shift has emerged in attitudes towards this responsibility. The government wants citizens to become more accountable for their own actions and to involve private parties in the control process. To get a clear idea of the causes behind this shift, we have analysed the historical development of building regulations, focusing particularly on changing perceptions of the government¿s role in safeguarding the quality of building and housing.
The government¿s first formal involvement in building and housing stemmed from the need to improve public health. The result was the Housing Act of 1901, which placed the responsibility for public housing policy squarely with the government and the responsibility for implementation in the hands of the local municipalities. This legislation immediately gave the municipalities the freedom to draw up their own building and housing regulations, and to introduce their own control and inspection measures. Accordingly, a situation evolved in which building regulations in one municipality could differ radically from building regulations in another. Meantime, delays occurred in projects that were specifically set up with the aim of easing the urgent housing shortage in the post-war years. The government decided to tackle the housing shortage by amending the building legislation in such a way that it would become more uniform and nationally applicable. Commercial and other parties in the building sector and ordinary citizens needed better legal protection. It was to this end that the Housing Act was drastically amended in 1961. The model building by-law, introduced in 1965, was primarily responsible for far-reaching standardisation of municipal building regulations. Nevertheless, the 1961 amendment still allowed the municipalities considerable freedom. The model building by-law gave them scope to grant exemption from regulations and to impose additional requirements. In the government¿s vision, equal legal status for commercial and other parties and ordinary citizens was still insufficiently guaranteed. In 1992, the sweeping standardisation of regulations culminated in the Building Decree, a universal set of regulations that all buildings had to meet.
In addition, the government¿s view of building policy in the last two decades of the twentieth century had been re-shaped by deregulation, which was expected to enhance freedom (including freedom of design), achieve equal legal status and legal protection for citizens, and ease the burden on industry and administrative bodies. Various legislative and regulatory amendments were based on these principles, but without the desired effect. Many players in the building sector criticised the complexity of building regulations. Meantime, pressure was mounting about the way in which the government was exercising its controlling role. It is partly because of this pressure, accompanied by the effects of societal trends, that the start of the twenty-first century has been marked by a period of progressive change, characterised by diminishing government involvement. The transfer of tasks (including control and inspection) from the public to the private sector, in addition to the transfer of responsibilities from the state to the citizen, should make building regulations more efficient and more effective.
This paper is based on a literature survey, which serves as the basis for a dissertation. Hopefully, this dissertation will offer solutions to the problem of how to shape.