The first confinement left many traces, including in terms of urban planning.

In the spring of 2020, all building permit procedures had indeed been suspended, for lack of being able to examine the files remotely, which led to considerable delays in real estate projects.

But the hegemony of all paper has come to an end.

On January 1, 2022, the urban planning departments began their march towards dematerialization.

A long-term project

Between the preliminary declarations of work, building permits, development permits, modifying permits or even demolition permits, hundreds of thousands of authorization requests must be examined each year.

No less than 470,000 housing units were authorized for construction in France between December 2020 and November 2021, according to figures from the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

However, previously, it was necessary to go through a request printed in multiple copies and sent by registered mail with acknowledgment of receipt or deposited at the municipal counter to obtain this sesame.

To save everyone time and money, the Élan law of November 23, 2018 decided to propel urban planning services into the digital age by providing for the dematerialization of procedures.

The measure entered into force on January 1, 2022.

First the deposit...

All municipalities in France without exception must now be able to receive planning permission applications electronically.

To compile your file, you can use the dedicated assistance teleservice accessible on Service-public.fr (online services section).

Once identified with the FranceConnect security system, all you have to do is describe your project to find out what information to provide and obtain the detailed list of documents to be provided.

You can then view and download the finalized online form.

On the sending side, everything depends on the methods chosen by your municipality.

Ideally, your city has set up a teleservice allowing you to send your file directly via the Internet.

But this is not necessarily the case everywhere.

Smaller municipalities can provide a simple dedicated e-mail address or a contact form.

...then the online instruction

If filing a case digitally is one thing, being able to instruct it digitally is another.

This is why the Élan law requires municipalities with more than 3,500 inhabitants to have a “specific online procedure allowing them to receive and process applications for planning permission in dematerialized form”.

Thanks to this system, all exchanges of information and additional documents between the applicant and the competent authority are therefore carried out quickly and easily online.

Similarly, the custodian can consult the progress of his file at any time and view the municipality's decision.

A revolution in town planning which should greatly facilitate the processing of applications and therefore speed up processing times.

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The revolution, but not for everyone

If the implementation of this measure is a step forward, it does not however concern all French people.

Indeed, of the 34,965 municipalities that France had on January 1, 2021, some 31,700 have a population of no more than 3,500 fellow citizens.

However, in the absence of suitable computer equipment and a teleservice for examining online applications, the smallest towns risk having to rematerialize the files received via the Internet, in other words having to print them at their own expense, in order to be able to process them at the old on paper… regrettable nonsense.

It will therefore undoubtedly take time to achieve a total and uniform dematerialization of urban planning applications throughout the territory.

You can still file or send your planning permission application in paper form,

if you wish it.

Dematerialization is only an additional option available to you.

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