The highways and byways of owning property in Belgium are often tortuous and Byzantine. We have reached a stage where we’re happy with the plans, and all that is needed to start shopping around for a builder is planning permission. Now, planning permission is something you expect to have to deal with in any civilised country. I wouldn’t want my neighbours to build wherever and however they want, so I don’t mind dealing with laws that impose the same restrictions on me.

However, this is Belgium, and paperwork often has a nasty edge.

Our plans were shown to officials at the Lubbeek town hall, who were quite happy with what we proposed doing. Knock down some ugly (and probably structurally unsound) walls on the barn, replace them with something modern and strong, and harmonise the construction effort to ensure maximum visibility of the windmill. No more ugly barn, but rather a modern, unassuming house blending into the background.

Yet despite Lubbeek’s approval, planning permission has to be requested from a regional department in Leuven. This is a process that can take up to three months, and used to take even longer. Playing it safe, our architect had a meeting with an official from this department before filing the paperwork, in case something had to be tweaked.

“Nyet,” the official decided. The request for planning permission will be denied.

By why on earth? An eyesore, with no architectural or historical value, will be replaced with an aesthetically pleasing house. The windmill, which does have architectural or historical value, will be preserved.

“We don’t allow building with wood,” the official stated. Note that this is a statement he wouldn’t back up on paper, and sounds so illogical that I can only assume he made it up on the spot.

“And anyway, it doesn’t meet the requirements of the law.”

This is a strange exhibition of the Belgian paradox. We are, in fact, fully compliant with the law. Belgian federal law, that is. The barn has been rezoned from agricultural/industrial to residential use, and we have the paperwork to prove it. Unfortunately, after all the legal requirements are listed, there is a single caveat: additional requirements can be provided for in Flemish legislation. On a local level, the Flemish government can add stipulations that may turn the clear federal law to legal mush.

And so they did.

The Flemish law states that, once a building is rezoned under this specific law, the owners may not undertake “significant” building works, or spend “a large” amount of money on it. Of course, “significant” building works could be anything between an hour that makes me miss Star Trek on a Saturday afternoon or building a full scale replica of the Taj Mahal made from sugar cubes. “Significant” is not a fixed measure.

Ditto for “a large amount” of money. Last week, when I was still convinced I would win a 180 million euro lottery jackpot, I was promising Ilze a million euros a cup to make me tea. Today, having only won 9 euros, I’ll baulk at spending anything on something like tea. So the Flemish “large amount of money” is totally meaningless.

Fortunately for us, we have approval to turn the barn into a residence. Black on white, the paperwork states that we are allowed to build a house largely based on the barn, not exceeding a volume of 1000m³. It’s pretty hard for the recalcitrant official to get around this, but he indicated that if he was forced to approve the plans, he’ll keep to a strict interpretation of the paperwork we already have. So, no breaking down walls, no replacing the whole structure, no brand spanking new house. We’ll have to renovate in the real sense of the word.

Ilze and the architect will be meeting with this official and his immediate superior this week, in the hope that Ilze’s combination of baby tears and psychopathic anger (coupled with an iron disdain for any form of logic) will be able to steamroller the system into allowing us to stick with the original building plans. If this doesn’t work, plan B would be to get back to the drawing board (quite literally) and seeing how we can turn the barn into something habitable.

The law stipulates that the ban on major renovations lasts ten years, so we’ll have to be patient before we can do what we really want. In the meantime, I’ll get my shovel and start working on some basements and bunkers. Let’s see Big Brother policing that!

Categories: Architecture
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