Enforcing Dutch building regulations: cutting or altering red tape?

Some deathly incidents in the beginning of the 21st century put building control high on the Dutch political and public agenda. Government, municipalities and private parties are working together on new more (cost-)effective building regulation enforcement-strategies. These new strategies seem to focus mostly on the execution-question: which party (private or public) can perform building control most cost-effective? Much attention is paid to the fact that municipalities seem to be (qualitative and/or quantitative) lacking the capacity to perform a level of building control that meets the legal criteria. Far less attention is paid to the fact that the occurrence of the incidents have shown, that regulations are not being (totally) fulfilled. In this paper we start by taking a look upon the present state of Dutch building regulations and building control. We then present a theoretical framework on both regulation and enforcement literature. The framework will be build up out of a continuum of enforcement-strategies ¿ from instrumental to normative; and a continuum of execution-strategies ¿ from public to private parties. In the second part of this paper we discuss new (under construction) Dutch building regulation enforcement-strategies and place these within the theoretical framework. In the final part of the paper we discuss the present state of Dutch building regulations and control, both formal and daily practice, and new enforcement strategies from the theoretical framework we¿ve build.