2004 legislation that they forgot to publish
In the next municipal council meeting, a part of the failure of the administrative process is on the agenda as a hammer item. So the Council does not consider it worthy of debate. This concerns the 'Handboek Welstand en Beeldkwaliteit', which was adopted in 2004. But it was never published in the correct legal manner, so it has not been in force for 18 years, even though it has been acted upon.
By Jan H. de Roij
In 2004 the 'Handboek Welstand en Beeldkwaliteit' was established. This handbook regulates the spatial quality and welfare supervision in our village. Welfare-free areas have also been designated. You will have to deal with this manual if, for example, you want to renovate your house or build a new object. Now, after 18 years, it appears that this manual does not meet the formal requirement of publication, so that it has never actually come into force. Nobody was ever concerned about this until last year the welfare criteria for solar panels were reassessed. This decision of the city council was constantly not published and therefore not implemented. The reason turned out to be that the basis of this decision lies in the manual and because the manual has not been established by law, the solar panel decree could not come into effect either. Responsible alderman Bart Boon was fairly laconic about this in the Committee meeting. There had never been any "hassle” in the past 18 years, meaning that decision-making based on the handbook has apparently never led to proceedings. A number of committee members were of the opinion that this complete handbook should be re-introduced into the participation process. The alderman strongly advised against this, because nothing has been changed in the manual. However, he undertook to examine the consequences of participation.
Nobody wants a new debate and decision about this complicated manual. Yet it is remarkable that in the committee meeting hardly any attention was paid to the principle point that apparently legislation is adopted in our village that is not published, so that there is no jurisdiction. Aren't Council members interested in knowing if something like this could happen again and if there's more unpublished legislation on a shelf somewhere? It is very special that such a failure of the 'administrative process' is dismissed as a hammering piece.