Resource information
The Environment and Planning Act is developed as a sequel to the Crisis and Recovery Act. In the context of the Global Financial Crisis, market players hardly realised buildings. In the rare case that a market player was willing to invest, the legal system should not limit investments, but facilitate initiative. Based on this thinking, the Environment and Planning Act is not aiming to facilitate public authorities to secure development based on public interest, but to facilitate takers of initiative that aim to construct even in time of crisis. This thinking has its consequences for the Complementary Act on Land Ownership. The Complementary Act incorporates legal arrangements form the Compulsory Purchase Act, the Municipal Pre-emption Act, the Act on Disposition of Rural Areas and the Spatial Planning Act to fit these in its system. These legal arrangements are made to connect plans with actual development on the ground and the issue is that the philosophy of planning by invitation of the Environment and Planning Act does not match with a public authority that aims to ensure that certain developments, such as the construction of sufficient affordable dwellings, actually take place. The local environment and land use plan in this new Act is not restricted, as prescribed by previous legislation, to developments that are feasible to be realised in the next 10 years, but the plan may be an unrealistic long term vision of the future. Such an unrealistic plan is too weak as legal ground for the taking of private property rights, which involves that it will be harder to use these legal arrangements.
