Many a builder has already experienced the following situation: the building application has been submitted to the building authority, and the building permit is expected shortly. The termination for the old apartment has already taken place. Now the building authority is still asking for documents; among these also an official site plan. Weren’t the architect’s floor plan and the cadastral map included with the documents?
Why, you will ask, do I still need an official site plan?
The basis for this requirement is the Building Permits Ordinance. This regulates which documents are to be attached to the building application. Since 1998, the official site plan, created by a publicly appointed surveyor, has been a mandatory part of the application.
The site plan is a simplified graphic representation of the earth’s surface and shows the facts required for the assessment of the construction project with regard to their position on the property or in the immediate vicinity to scale. In contrast to the architect’s documents, which primarily represent the planned construction project, the official site plan primarily contains information about existing facts. This includes the existing buildings, ground reinforcements, fences and hedges, trees, height information and access systems such as sliders, shafts, electrical boxes.
The details of the real estate cadastre are an essential part of the official Site plan. This includes the property boundaries, the parcel numbers, the boundary lengths and the details of the neighboring owners. Furthermore, it contains information on planning determinations by the municipality from development plans or interior statutes. The planned construction project is taken from the architect’s documents for information purposes, the distance areas resulting from the building regulations can be proven in the site plan.
The special importance of the official site plan results from its holistic presentation of all property-related facts that influence the construction project or are affected by it. A connection is made between the actual location, the legal circumstances and the planned building intentions.
Who hasn’t heard of a dispute between neighbors, in which it turns out that the fence has been wrong for years and the new house is now only two meters from the common border. A demolition order is imminent. Here, the official site plan would have created legal certainty beforehand, since the neighboring distance measure is derived from the actual border evidence.
The official site plan can be requested from any publicly appointed surveyor. The documents of the cadastral office are mandatory for its creation. Here, the client should allow sufficient time for procurement. It makes sense if he consults a publicly appointed surveyor right from the start of the planning phase.
