Immission protection in the simplified building permit procedure BW

Hello everyone,

First of all, thank you very much for your assessments/your advice!

We are in the building permit process (§52 State Building Code) for a single-family house in a municipality in Baden-Württemberg. The building plot is an old farm that we completely demolished in Q3 2022. The demolition application was approved without comment after about 1 month by the municipality and the district office. Since the building plot is a property in the old town center, there is no development plan.

At the beginning of September 2022, we submitted the building application to the municipality, which then approved it and forwarded it to the district office at the end of September. The deadline for feedback from the district office was set for 27.12.2022.

Minor inquiries from the district office could be resolved quickly in the following two months (mainly concerning the noise level of the integral air-water heat pump).

At the beginning of December, we received a letter stating that the agricultural department now also has to examine the emissions of the surrounding farmsteads. From this point on, there is no defined deadline for a decision on the building application anymore, as the building authority has not yet received all the documents.

At the end of January/beginning of February, we called various agencies to find out the following: In the Alb-Donau district, there is only one state employee who carries out inspections of the farmsteads for municipalities and private construction projects. This person now has two large orders from municipalities with about 300 inspections to be carried out and 8 inspections concerning our building project. Several remarks on this:

1) How is it possible that we only find out the extent of the delay in the decision on our building application through the most intensive efforts?
2) Why is there only one person who does this job?
3) How is it possible that there is no further processing of a matter for 2 months?

Background: Once the measurements are made, they still have to be calculated by another office. Then it can take up to another two months until a decision is made by the building authority. The responsible person now says it could take until the end of Q2 (end of June 2023) until he has made the measurements and forwarded them to the building authority. If you think about it, data about the farmsteads is surely collected elsewhere, so this certainly causes duplicate effort.

The 8 farmsteads partly consist of farmsteads that have not been cultivated for years, but agriculture and forestry have not yet been deregistered. Only one farmer has about 20 cattle at maybe 100 m air distance. I have never noticed any odor nuisance.

Quite a number of costs depend on the timing, which increase with further delay.

However, we are clueless how to accelerate something here or possibly report a process that is not legally proper.

If the building application is rejected, we wonder why we were allowed to demolish the old farm. Now 1,000 sqm stand empty in the middle of the village.

Primarily, we ask ourselves to what extent this whole process is reasonable for a private construction project.

What I don't understand is, didn't you know beforehand that you need the report? Did you submit a preliminary building inquiry? Demolishing without the approval for the new construction is always a bit risky.
Of course, it's annoying that everything is delayed because there is so little staff for it. Don't you have an architect who might have a good connection to the approving authority?
In our case, a building area was also not approved because the emissions protection report was unfavorable and the farmer will not give up his business but rather expand it.

In the meantime, the agricultural department has been able to carry out the data collection and is now calculating it.

The application has now been pending for 8 months.

As my predecessor said. One deals with such things beforehand. I don't remove the old wheels from my car, throw them away, don't have any new ones yet, and then complain when the tire or rim manufacturer cannot deliver. For whatever reason.

Weird comparison. Is the rim manufacturer then the district office or the general contractor?

To follow up on your analogy (even though you haven’t said a single sensible, kind, or helpful word)

At least we asked the rim manufacturer if we could remove and throw away the rims. At the same time, we mentioned that we wanted to install new rims and gave him all the information for that..


On the subject of We should have dealt with it beforehand:
- The architect’s consulting service on this matter was nonexistent
- The municipality did not warn either
- We ourselves were not aware, and even after research and active inquiry, there is very little information on the topic
- It doesn’t help to just say that one should deal with it beforehand

If you have nothing meaningful to contribute, then just don’t write anything..

After our building application, there was a report on Süd West Rundfunk on the subject, right here nearby. Many people with building plots in the village have similar problems.

I know a few people who have demolished old buildings in our village and built a new house. But to my knowledge, no one started the demolition before the building permit was approved. It just turned out badly that you didn’t know beforehand and no one said anything. If it’s an architect who usually only works in new development areas, they might not think about this local regulation. If the employee at the office assumes that you know the rules, they won’t give any notice either. It just turned out badly. Just make the best of it now!