Commercial offices in business parks, this is allowed more often than thought.

Is an office or store allowed in a business park? To assess this, the zoning plan must be checked carefully. This is of great importance which "interpretation rules" the State Council uses when interpreting a zoning plan to determine whether a certain use or building plan is permitted.

In recent years, the State Council has given direction in several rulings on how to interpret a zoning plan.

Explanation rules

1. The case law of the Council of State shows that the zoning designation indicated on the map and the accompanying plan rules are decisive for answering the question of whether a building plan violates the zoning plan.
2. Specific use rules included in the plan rules must also be involved in the test of whether the building plan/use is in accordance with the zoning. Deviation rules in a zoning plan, however, according to the State Council, may not be involved in the interpretation of a plan rule.
3. A non-binding explanation of a zoning plan only has significance if the plan rules are neither clear in themselves nor in conjunction. In such a case, the explanation can provide more insight into the intention of the city council.
4. If a term is not defined in the planning regulations and (the explanation of) the
   zoning plan offers no leads for the interpretation of the specific term, the interpretation of the term may be based on general speech usage. In that case, the Council of State uses the Van Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal.

Based on these interpretation rules, it must be assessed whether a building plan or a specific use is allowed on a certain parcel. It is important to use the correct order of these interpretation rules to avoid drawing the wrong conclusion. Here it is important that the Council of State first looks at the image and the corresponding plan rule and then includes what is necessary.

Commercial office in business park

A regularly occurring situation is the following:

The land in question is zoned Business. Article 3 paragraph 1 of the plan regulations, which refers to the zoning for businesses, stipulates that businesses in environmental category 1 - 3.1 of the accompanying Schedule of Business Activities are allowed. A definition of business has not been included in the zoning plan and the zoning plan offers no indication of the concept of business.

The use rules to article 3 further stipulate that retail trade, except for peripheral retail trade, is not allowed. Further use rules regarding the zoning business are not included in the plan rules. The list of business activities includes business services as category 2 and the term office is defined as a facility aimed at providing services in administrative, financial, architectural, legal or similar areas.

In such a case, commercial offices for business services are allowed within the zoning business. I explain.

After all, Article 3 stipulates that businesses in cat. 1 - 3.1 of the Statement of Business Activities are allowed. First of all, it must then be assessed whether an office is a business within the meaning of the zoning plan. The term business is not defined and neither the plan regulations nor the explanatory notes contain any clues for the interpretation of the term business.

In that case, the Council of State looks at what the "thick Van Dale" defines as a business. According to that definition, a business includes 'providing services'. An office involves the provision of services.

The next step is that an office is also included in the Statement of Business Activities. With this, an office is permitted under Article 3, paragraph 1 of the plan rules.

Since the relevant plan regulations do not include specific use rules for offices, it must be concluded that an office is permitted on site.

This example also shows that zoning plans regularly allow for more functions than initially thought. It therefore pays to study the zoning plan carefully (or have it studied).

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