Offences and nuisance

In the event of a violation, such as illegal building activities, unauthorised business activities or nuisance situations, you want it to stop.

There are various options available, depending on the situation: you try to talk to the person causing the nuisance or you request the municipal authorities to start an enforcement action. There are also possibilities to ask the judge to impose a measure to stop the nuisance you are experiencing.

What does HABITAT do?

First, we will investigate whether there has indeed been a violation of prohibitions and applicable regulations; the legal assessment framework. If that is sufficient, a strategy is then needed to actually stop the alleged nuisance or damaging action. What the best approach is in your case depends very much on the situation on site, the legal ins and outs and the parties involved. If agreements are made, we will ensure that they are set out clearly and enforceably in an agreement.

For a substantive discussion of the case and a possible approach, we recommend a HABITAT-START appointment.

You can also work on a simple enforcement request to the authorities yourself, if the case is not too complicated in itself. We can help you with this free of charge with our HABITAT-MODELLEN. With our model enforcement request you can create a complete enforcement request that you can print out and send by registered mail.

The government must always respond to your enforcement request within 8 weeks. This response must state that an enforcement action has been initiated or that your enforcement request has been refused for a specific reason. You may also be informed that more time is needed to process your request. In that case, the decision to grant your request will come later.

We recommend always referring any correspondence from the authorities in connection with your submitted enforcement request to us. We can, of course, help you to prepare a simple enforcement request of your own at modest cost. If the government does not respond in time to your written request, we can use procedural means to force the government to make a decision on your enforcement request.

If you do not receive a concrete response or if you are not satisfied with the government action as a result of your enforcement request, HABITAT can help you further in the continuation of the enforcement procedure.

Of course, we can also assist you in drafting the enforcement request, especially when it concerns a case with a lot of history and/or a complex situation.