The war in Ukraine and the increase in migrants coming into the Netherlands have increased the urgency for more accommodation, Housing and Spatial Planning Minister Hugo De Jong wrote in an action plan sent to the House of Representatives on Thursday.
The Residential Building program aims to create 900,000 homes by 2030. In 2020, NL Times reported that 845,000 homes must be built by 2030 to meet market demands.
“We are faced with persistently high construction prices, with limited availability of material, with uncertainty about matters such as the nitrogen issue, the rise in interest rates, and the tightness of the labour market,” De Jong wrote.
Improvement in efficiency during the project planning phase, additional resources for municipalities and provinces, and a push for industrial innovation are among the measures included in the plan of action sent to the House of Representatives by De Jong.
”Building a house, from plan to realisation, takes an average of ten years. This should and can be shorter”. With an emphasis on shortening the time between planning and construction, de Jong’s plan proposes to explore best practices via pilot projects, with a view to later escalating them by engaging with regional authorities, housing corporations, market parties, and judicial authorities.
Additionally, €90 million will be made available for new staff at the municipal and provincial levels to build administrative capacity, further standardisation of building requirements is foreseen to reduce time and costs, and the objection and appealing processes will be centralised under one agency.
The action plan hopes to counter-fight the housing shortage hitting the country, “we owe it to all house seekers to do everything in our power to accelerate housing construction,” said De Jong.
(Sofia Stuart Leeson | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
