Environmental plan amendment announcement

The municipality announces an amendment environmental plan containing spatial developments in advance, for example in a residents' letter, a door-to-door newspaper or on the municipality's website(Notices). 

Draft environmental plan amendment

The municipality prepares a draft. This draft can be viewed for six weeks, for example at the town hall or on the Internet. During this six-week period, you can express your views (opinions) to the municipal council. If you do not do this, you cannot lodge an appeal or request a preliminary injunction after the amendment to the environmental plan has been adopted. How to do this is described in the publication of the plan.

Adopt and publish amendment to environmental plan

After the six-week period, the City Council must adopt the plan within 12 weeks. Once the city council has adopted the plan, they have two weeks to publish the decision.

The deadline for publication may be longer, six or seven weeks, in certain cases. For example, if the province and the Rijksoverheid own or manage nearby lands.

Appeal

Do you disagree with the City Council's decision? Then you can lodge an appeal with the Administrative Law Division of the Council of State. In the announcement of the determination decision, the municipality indicates the period during which you can lodge an appeal. The period is always six weeks. After that, the amendment environmental plan comes into effect and the municipality can start implementing the plan or parts of it.

To appeal, you must have expressed your views during the draft phase of the procedure. If you have not made your views known, you can only appeal against changes made by the City Council compared to the draft.

Request for injunctive relief

Do you want to stop construction from already taking place? Then, if you have appealed, you can also file a request for injunctive relief. If that request is granted, the effective date of the decision will be suspended until a decision is made on the appeal.

Registry money

Are you appealing a decision to the court or filing a request for injunctive relief? Then you pay a court registry fee. If you win a case, the court fees will be refunded.

Environmental permit to deviate from zoning plan

If a particular project does not fit within the environmental plan, the municipality may decide to cooperate anyway through an environmental permit.