The Minister of Housing announces 10 simplification measures to relaunch construction without convincing the sector

The Minister for Housing, Guillaume Kasbarian, announced on Tuesday March 12 in Cannes ten measures to simplify town planning procedures, to shorten deadlines and reduce costs, in a context of deep construction crisis.

Some of these measures will be the subject of decrees "in the coming weeks", others will be integrated into projects or proposed laws in the coming months, the minister promised at a press conference.

A bill "for middle-class housing", including the sensitive reform of the Solidarity and Urban Renewal (SRU) law on social housing quotas, will be presented "by June" for initial examination reading “before summer” in one of the two assemblies, promised Guillaume Kasbarian.

For now, the minister has proposed ten measures, mainly technical, aimed at starting "five simplification projects".

“It is important, in the housing crisis that we are experiencing, (…) to be present alongside those who are suffering,” said Guillaume Kasbarian during the International Market for Real Estate Professionals (Mipim) in Cannes.

Among these measures, the shortening of the deadlines for filing an appeal against a building and development permit, and the deadlines for examining these appeals, which according to the executive would make it possible to reduce "up to 10% of the cost of the land portage". These measures will be passed through legislation.

The minister also hoped that stakeholders could act more quickly in the event of refusal of building permits in tense areas.

He promised to accelerate the digitalization of planning permissions, by requiring more legal entities and professionals to submit building permits electronically.

Other technical measures must simplify planning procedures and relax the rules allowing construction within an existing subdivision.

The president of the French Building Federation (FFB) Olivier Salleron welcomed these measures with freshness. “Nothing new under the sun,” he lambasted at a press conference shortly before the ministerial announcements. "We've been asking for this for three years. So if it takes three years to have some free measures (...) I'm not telling you the state of the building and employment in three years."