Municipal councils refuse to take responsibility for building delays

Individual municipalities are responsible for regulating these procedures, which means homeowners can have completely different experiences when obtaining building permits depending on which municipality they are building in. RTL's Maxime Gillen asked Luxembourg's top 10 municipalities with the most residents how quickly they usually issue authorisations for construction projects.

Luxembourg City was the only council to publish clear data on the average length of time to issue building permits. In 2022, it took an average of 51 days to issue a permit - whether for garden sheds or building residences. According to the authority, this represents an improvement on previous years in which the average was 80 or 110 days respectively.

The other 9 municipalities did not publish similar statistics - primarily because they claimed individual projects could not be broken down to figures. Differdange mayor Guy Altmeisch explained:

"Every file is different. We can't say that building permits in Differdange take 35 days to be issued, for example, as each request requires different treatment due to its nature. The only thing I can say is, from what I see, based on the date on the file until the date it is signed off, that the permits are issued within a reasonable amount of time."

Municipalities for which the authorisation is not dependent on other opinions, for example, that of the CGDIS, say it takes between one and three months to issue a building permit. During that time, the local authority checks whether the project complies with the municipality's building regulations. In many cases, a building commission must issue its opinion on the project before a 30-day public notice is given. Then, the building permit is authorised, provided there are no major complaints.
This period of time only applies when the file is complete and compliant, however. Therein lies the problem, according to the municipal councils, as some builders take a long time to submit the necessary documents, or to make the required adjustments to ensure the project complies with local building regulations.

At a municipal level, Schifflange mayor Paul Weimerskirch argues there is nothing to be done to speed up the process:

"We live in a democracy and democratic processes can take a long time. Building requests are subject to the principle that everyone has the right to build, and there are rules and standards that must be adhered to. Personally, I can't see what could be improved to make the process any faster than it already is."

Out of the ten municipalities surveyed by RTL, between 3 and 7 people work in each department handling building permits, apart from the capital, where the service is made up of 21 employees.