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idw - Informationsdienst
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The German government wants to make investing in Germany more attractive again.
According to the latest IfM study, ‘Policy approaches to speeding up and simplifying commercial building permit procedures,’ it would be helpful if non-essential requirements and standards were removed from building regulations. In addition, both bundled responsibility for approval procedures at district and government level and the empowerment and encouragement of municipal employees to exercise discretionary powers to speed up procedures would have positive effects.
In recent years, Germany has tended to lose attractiveness as a location for investment projects. One reason is that commercial building permit procedures can sometimes take very long, making it difficult to accurately estimate total project costs.
This situation particularly affects small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as they generally have less experience in dealing with planning authorities and typically lack both the necessary in-house expertise and the financial buffers that large corporations can draw upon. "To strengthen Germany as a business location, it would therefore be helpful if the federal and state governments enacted simple, transparent and durable legal regulations to facilitate the implementation of construction projects. This includes a revision of building regulations with the aim of reducing non-essential requirements and standards," explains Hans-Jürgen Wolter. He and his team have examined current approval processes for commercial construction projects in a recent study. They concluded that involving those that are affected – ranging from companies and planning service providers to public authorities – more closely in the legislative and evaluation process could increase the practical relevance of regulatory requirements. "At present, considerations that are not directly related to the building project – such as mandatory energy efficiency standards in the context of the goal of CO₂ neutrality – also have to be taken into account. This has significantly increased both the complexity of building regulations and the frequency of changes in recent years, overwhelming not only the companies but increasingly also the permitting authorities," reports the IfM project manager.
"Enabling culture" promotes municipal development
Accelerating building permit procedures also requires the broader use of digital solutions. It has become evident, that the use of digital files for building permit applications can reduce postal delays, increase procedural trnasparency, and ideally enable simultaneous real-time processing by all parties involved. Moreover, if responsibility for permit procedures were also centralised at the district or regional administrative level, learning and scale effects could be better realized, and specialised expertise for complex constructions projects could be developed more effectively.
At the same time, the IfM researchers recommend that decision-makers in municipal authorities establish a consequent "enabling culture". This includes empowering and encouraging employees to use their discretionary authority to accelerate procedures, as well as offering comprehensive information and advisory services to applicants. This could help resolve critical issues much more quickly.
According to the IfM’s researchers, municipalities that already adopted this kind of service-oriented approach, benefit from higher business tax revenue, for example. Companies that regularly submit building applications are well aware of the differences between municipalities and take this into account when choosing a location for their planned investments.
https://www.ifm-bonn.org/fileadmin/data/redaktion/publikationen/ifm_materialien/... (In German only)
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