The interaction between local building committees and public officials

Abstract: The local building committee is responsible for handling building permits. The committee consists partly of elected politicians that, among other things, make decisions regarding building permits. When a building permit case arrives at the municipality it is reviewed by the public officials, who then forwards the case to the elected politicians of the building committee that make the decision. The elected politicians generally decide as suggested by the public officials, but not always. We have studied how frequently the decisions differs between the elected politicians and the public officials suggestions. In our study we’ve chosen four municipalities in Stockholm County to find out how the frequency varies between different municipalities. Our chosen municipalities are Stockholm, Huddinge, Södertälje and Nykvarn. We have found that in one third of all our studied cases the decisions from the elected politicians in Stockholm do not follow the suggestions from the public officials. In Huddinge the equivalent part is circa 2 %. The elected politicians of the building committees in Södertälje and Nykvarn decide according to the public officials suggestions in all of our studied cases. Furthermore we have studied what the differences are based on. Generally it comes down to a question of judgment within the law, such as whether a deviation from the local plan could be considered as small. We have however found one case where the judgment from the elected politicians is outside the law. One of our hypotheses prior to this thesis was that the elected politician’s right to decide would be superfluous if we’d found that the decision always would follow the suggestions from the public officials. Our studies however show that this is not the case and due to the fact that the elected politician’s decisions sometimes differs from the suggestions of the public officials we find them both important, why their right to decide should remain.