The Department of municipal planning and urban development deals with the relations between the State and the municipalities with regards to the organisation of the municipal territory and the organisation of demographic, ecological, economic, social, cultural, financial and spatial resources of the municipalities. The department assists the Minister as the supervisory authority for municipal planning and urban development, particularly concerning the approval of development plans and the general coordination of municipal activities related to municipal planning.
Planning Commission
The planning commission has been ascribed the task of assessing all projects and questions regarding municipal planning submitted to them by the different municipalities. Specifically, the commission reviews general development plans, as well as modifications and revisions of these plans respectively.
The planning commission is governed by the provisions of Article 4 of the amended law of 19 July 2004 on municipal planning and urban development and by the provisions of the Grand-Ducal Regulation of 8 March 2017 on the organisation and operation of the planning commission as well as of the evaluation unit.
Evaluation Unit
The mission of the evaluation unit is to verify the conformity and compatibility of the special development plans (PAP) with the laws and regulations in force, in accordance with Article 30 of the amended law of 19 July 2004 on municipal planning and urban development.
The evaluation unit drafts its statements on a PAP in consultation with the expert representatives of the various ministries and administrations. This includes in particular the services of the Ministry of the Environment (biotopes, environmental impact studies), the Water Management Administration (surface water retention, flood zones), the Roads Administration (road permissions) or the Monument protection authority (presence of a protected building).
Consultation platform
Since the evaluation unit only issues its assessment at a time when the project development is in principle fully completed and already submitted to the public inquiry, it is, at this stage, difficult to redirect a project that has already been subject of a certain number of reflections of the PAP initiator or of discussions with the concerned administrations.
In order to effectively address these problems, the consultation platform serves as a one-stop shop for urban planning and aims to allow municipalities and project initiators to be advised before the preparation of their PAP, prior to the submission of the file into the adoption procedure.
This approach allows to unite all the concerned administrations at an early stage of the project's development, and thus to avoid that the PAP cannot be implemented at a later stage due to a missing authorisation from one administration or another. Moreover, this approach results in a true administrative simplification that allows for a more efficient monitoring of projects and, in particular, an increase in the speed of processing and execution of urban planning projects.