Glossary

The stages of a case

Permit application

The filing of the case with the commune or the region. Its date is when the project becomes publicly known; on this site that is the reception date or, failing that, the sending date.

Acknowledgement of a complete file

The act by which the administration records that the file holds every required document. That, and not the filing, starts the review clock. An acknowledgement of an incomplete file interrupts the process until the missing pieces arrive.

Special publicity measures

The regime triggered when a project departs from a rule or passes certain thresholds. It leads to a public inquiry and, usually, to the consultation committee.

Public inquiry

The period during which the file can be consulted and anyone may submit observations. It is announced by red notices on site, and its length is set by the applicable procedure.

Consultation committee

The body bringing together the commune, the region and, depending on the project, other administrations. It sits in public, hears the applicant and the objectors, and issues an opinion. That opinion informs the decision without replacing it.

Review period

The time the authority has to decide once the file is complete. It varies by procedure and can be suspended, for instance while an opinion is awaited. The durations we publish are measured on cases that were actually decided.

Decision

The grant or refusal of the permit, notified to the applicant. A case can also be withdrawn by the applicant, cancelled, or taken over by the delegated official.

Planning charges

Contributions, in money or in kind, imposed on projects above a certain size: housing, facilities, public space. A missing amount does not mean there are none.

Lapse

The expiry of a permit whose works have not started, or not been finished, within the period set by the rules. Validity dates published by the source are sometimes plainly wrong and are then neutralised.

The kinds of case

Planning permit (PU)

The authorisation required to build, transform, change the use of a property, fell trees or alter the external appearance. It is in principle granted by the communal college.

Permit granted by the delegated official (PFD)

A case reviewed and decided by the region's delegated official rather than by the commune, notably for public projects or projects of regional interest.

Referral to the delegated official (SFD)

If the commune does not decide within the deadline, the applicant may refer the case to the delegated official. The communal case then carries the label “Saisi par FD” and a new case appears at the same address. This site links the two.

Modification permit

A permit that modifies an already granted one. Its description usually cites the parent permit's reference, which we use to link the two cases.

Regularisation

An application covering works already carried out without a permit, or not in line with the permit obtained.

Environmental permit

The authorisation to operate an installation, classified by the nuisance it may cause: classes 1A and 1B, the heaviest, sit with Bruxelles Environnement; class 2 with the commune; class 3 is a simple declaration.

Mixed case

A project needing both a planning and an environmental permit. The two cases are linked and reviewed in parallel; this site shows them as one project.

Urban-planning information (RU)

The document describing the planning situation of a property: its use, the permits granted, any infringements. It is requested almost systematically before a sale, which is why we never show it at address level.

Communal authorisation (AC)

A communal register that is not a permit register: information requests, complaints, alleged infringements. These cases almost never receive a decision and are excluded from every statistic on this site.

The official sub-type and status labels shown on each page come straight from the source, in both national languages, and are never re-translated by us.

This site's own vocabulary

Work type

Our classification of the description into 21 categories — new build, extension, change of use, façade, roof and so on. It is produced automatically and carries no administrative weight.

Net m²

The area actually added or removed per use: authorised area, or projected when there is none, minus the existing area. The surfaces published by the source are totals after the works, not the size of the job.

Case outcome

Our normalised reading of the status: granted, refused, withdrawn, transferred, lapsed or pending. It is derived from the status label first and the status code second, because the code alone conflates several situations.

Observed event

A change we saw between two nightly loads. We know its date to within a day.

Reconstructed event

A step inferred from the case's date fields, for what happened before we were watching that case. The date is the one published by the source.

Reason code

The explanation shown in place of a missing value: absent from the source, not declared, not applicable to this kind of case, implausible, or an unusable description.

Abbreviations