Belgium is known for paperwork. Like its larger neighbour to the west, the Belgian civil service is fueled by a passionate love of bureaucracy and red tape. But living in Belgium means dealing with paperwork and senseless rules and petty bureaucracy, so we braced ourselves and filed our revised house plans at the Lubbeek town hall last week. Correction: we braced ourselves, but only Ilze and the architect went to file the paperwork, taking the approach that feminine wiles will warm the heart of even the most recalcitrant civil servant.

The new plans mean that the volume of the house will be increased from 1,000m³ (for which we had planning permission) to slightly more than than. Wonder of wonders, the Lubbeek town council had no problem with that. The architect smiled, the clerk smiled, Ilze smiled, stamps were produced, paperwork was approved.

But nothing happens that easily in Belgium. If this was a regular property, the paperwork would have been ready for handing over to the building contractors. But alors… the property is classified as “duel use”: we have a bit of land in the back zoned for agricultural use, we have a part (on which the windmill stands) zoned for light industrial use, and we have the part where the house will be built, which is zoned for residential use.

This rainbow of zoning means our building application has to be bumped up for approval on a regional level, which has to happen in neighbouring Leuven. This is not a process as simple as smiling and having your paperwork stamped, and can realistically take up to three months to complete. That takes us into May before the contractors can start any work.

If we’re lucky the house will be habitable around the end of July, beginning of August. Lovely.

To top it all, a drainpipe has come loose on the windmill. If I leave it like that, rain water running down the walls will surely lead to staining and ugly marks, perhaps even structural damage. So I’ll have to don my monkey shoes and climb up 14 meters with a frame better suited to staying on the ground and shouting instructions. Even lovelier.

Categories: General
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