Minister Keijzer: “The housing shortage is high and we need to build faster, more, and cheaper homes. We must adhere to many rules that lead to delays, higher costs, and uncertainties. This STOER advice is clear: those rules were all made with the best intentions, but the accumulation of them hinders housing construction. Therefore, I will amend the requirements from the Decision on Building Environment as quickly as possible and ask builders and developers to report unauthorized local building requirements so that I can take action against them. I will discuss the other recommendations with my colleagues in the cabinet. This way, we can accelerate housing construction without compromising the basic quality of homes.”

The minister wants to promptly tackle the various important topics from the advisory report. The technical building requirements in the Decision on Building Environment (Bbl) will be adjusted to prevent unnecessary cost increases while maintaining the basic quality of homes. This includes lowering ceiling and door heights, allowing the use of steeper stairs, and easing internal noise requirements. The advice to eliminate accessibility requirements for balconies (including loggias and roof terraces) will not be adopted, as this is the Dutch interpretation of the obligation arising from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2016.

Another important finding is that no local requirements on top of the Bbl are allowed. The minister calls on builders and developers to report extra local requirements to the acceleration tables so that she can take action against them. Furthermore, the announced tightening of the environmental performance requirement (MPG) for homes will not be implemented. Instead, the minister is preparing the construction sector for the whole life cycle global warming potential (wlc-gwp). This is the new European requirement for greenhouse gas emissions that construction and use of homes must meet. The minister also calls on municipalities to conduct faster and more efficient quality assessments and to use model agreements between municipalities and landowners in land policy. Other recommendations that are being adopted relate to network congestion and objections and appeals where processing times will be shortened. This way, acceleration of procedures can be achieved by making more effective use of legal possibilities.

With the proposals mentioned that fall under Housing and Spatial Planning, the minister will get to work immediately. The changes to the Bbl must be implemented next year so that they have a positive effect on the desired housing production of at least 100,000 homes per year. In the short term, the STOER advisory group will present its final report to Minister Keijzer. The decision-making and further elaboration of the report will be discussed in the cabinet, after which the official cabinet response to the report will follow in the autumn of 2025.