Open normen in het omgevingsplan

A municipal council is required, under the Environment and Planning Act, to adopt an environmental plan that includes rules concerning the physical living environment. These rules can relate to a wide range of activities and may contain both closed and open standards. One advantage of open standards is that they offer flexibility in the application of the rules. The research by Jur van der Velde focuses on the legal conditions for and the use of open standards in environmental plan regulations that pertain to construction, installation, and usage activities that may alter the physical living environment.An important conclusion of his research is that the legal limits on the use of open standards primarily stem from the principle of legal certainty. The rules in the environmental plan must be sufficiently clear and safeguard the rights of third parties. If necessary, the administrative court will assess on a case-by-case basis whether the plan rules meet those requirements.The research includes the recommendation that, when assessing compliance with the principle of legal certainty, the (text of the) plan rule should be the primary point of reference, with less weight given to policy rules and policy documents. It also provides several guidelines for achieving plan rules that offer sufficient legal certainty.Due to the applicability of the principle of legal certainty, open standards for the activities examined are expected to play a smaller role in an environmental plan than the legislator intended. Possible exceptions to this are the rules in the environmental plan for assessing applications for an environmental permit and the rules that include (specific) duty-of-care obligations. Despite the limited applicability of open standards, they can contribute to a good and safe physical living environment. This requires not only careful legal drafting of the rules but also that the open standards are substantiated through policy. Open standards require significant legal and administrative attention when drafting and implementing the construction, installation, and usage rules in an environmental plan.

Dissertation: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/f816e623-7a55-4717-99bf-3eadc7356667