Once stakeholder, always stakeholder?

To lodge an objection or appeal against a decision of an administrative body, you, as a citizen or business, must be considered an interested party. It is clear from established case law that the person directly affected by the actual consequences of an activity authorised by the decision is, in principle, an interested party. The factors considered are distance from, view of, planning impact of and environmental consequences of the activity the decision authorises. 

What citizens and businesses often think is that once they have been interested parties in a development near them, they are always interested parties in future cases. So did the applicant in the Divisional Court ruling of 28 January 2025. 

What exactly was going on here? The applicant had not only lodged an appeal, but also requested the Division to grant a preliminary injunction because the Gooise Meren Municipal Executive had granted an environmental permit for the expansion of the existing canopy for fast charging on a plot in the applicant's neighbourhood. Mind you, the environmental permit only covered the extension of the canopy and not the installation of the fast chargers. 

Despite the fact that his objection was declared inadmissible and his appeal unfounded, the applicant believed he was an interested party. He argued that in the past, he had been considered an interested party in developments near the parcel now affected by the environmental permit. The Division did not agree. It ruled that the applicant was not an interested party because the distance between the applicant's home and the plot in question was more than 800 metres. Although the applicant might suffer some impact from the extension of the canopy, it could not be said to be an impact of any significance precisely because of the large distance between the two plots. It was irrelevant that the interested party had also been an interested party in the past. After all, the circumstances of the case are always considered.

You can read the Division's decision here.