Defining good public participation processes under the Environment and Planning Act

Abstract

On January 1st 2024, the Environment and Planning Act (EPA) took effect in the Netherlands. This legislation aims to simplify existing environmental legislation for spatial projects by combining them into one. An important pillar of the EPA, specifically of the environmental permit, is public participation. However, the safeguarding of this in the law is limited since its organization is not regulated. In general, the methods for involving the public in environmental decision-making remain contentious, which has previously led to research into principles that define good public participation processes. The majority of the literature assumes that all parties involved in a process share the same principles, while it may be the case that stakeholders hold differing views on what constitutes a good process. In the EPA, a conscious choice was made to prohibit municipalities from imposing requirements on initiators on how they implement participation, the reason for this being enabling local customization. Yet, this uncertainty regarding the best practices for public participation can make it difficult for an initiator to set up participation for their project. This research aimed to gain insight into what constitutes a good public participation process by determining if and how stakeholders characterize this differently, specifically for real estate construction in residential areas. Therefore, the research question was as follows: What perspectives exist on what constitutes a good public participation process for real estate construction projects in residential areas and what characterizes the stakeholders within these perspectives?

Q-methodology was used to extract stakeholders' views on successful participation from the results of a survey. This resulted in the identification of four perspectives, representing four different collective views on good participation shared by several stakeholders. Perspective one, a trusted process leading to influence by the right people, considers participation to be good if trust is created and the input provided actually influences the initiative. The second perspective, a clearly defined process resulting in greater support, has a positive opinion about participation as long as the organized process is very clear, professional, and properly followed, and results in greater support for the initiative. The third perspective, achieving satisfaction with a tailor-made process, believes that participation is good if the process is situation-specific, followed well and there is satisfaction with how it went down, regardless of whether it resulted in adjustments to the design of the initiative. Lastly, perspective four, as long as everyone is heard, feels that participation is good when the design of the initiative is changed according to the input provided by participants who were involved from the start and whose expertise is valued. After the identification of these perspectives, it was investigated whether a relationship could be observed between a stakeholder's characteristic and their perspective. Here, it was observed that civil servants relatively adhere to perspective three more than the other groups.

This research has provided new scientific insights by showing that there are different views on what constitutes 'good' public participation. These perspectives have unique aspects but they also have some similarities. It is recommended that project initiators incorporate important aspects of all four perspectives when designing a participation process for an initiative, to ensure that it is as 'good' as possible. To aid initiators in doing so, a one-pager has been drafted which contains an overview of the important aspects of each of the perspectives. With this, the practical aim of the research - which was to provide support to project initiators for the setup of participation processes - was achieved.