Have your say - submit a consultation response
The board of the water authority regularly takes decisions on plans, projects, regulations, or permits. We prepare these decisions carefully. As a result, the board often makes some decisions available for public consultation before taking a final decision. This is called a draft decision. It is possible to respond to a draft decision, and that is called submitting a consultation response.
Who can submit a consultation response?
Anyone can respond to a draft decision. The water authority officially publishes draft decisions in the Waterschapsblad (Water Authority Journal). You can find our announcements on the Announcements (Dutch only) page.
What do you need?
In your consultation response, you state:
- Your name, address, and preferably also your phone number and email address;
- A description of the draft decision to which your consultation response relates;
- And the content of your consultation response.
You have six weeks to submit your consultation response. This period begins on the day on which the draft decision is made available for public consultation. You can find this date in the Waterschapsblad that contains the announcement of the draft decision. For some plans, there is a shorter period in which you can respond. This will also be stated in the announcement.
How does it work?
You can submit your written consultation response:
The Executive Board of the Noorderzijlvest Water Authority
Postbus 18
9700 AA Groningen
You can also submit your 'consultation response' verbally. The announcement states who you can contact regarding the draft decision.
How does the procedure work?
- We respond to all consultation responses regarding a draft decision in a response memorandum. In this memorandum, we indicate whether we will amend the draft decision in response to the consultation response.
- If you have submitted a consultation response, you will receive personal notification of the final decision. You will also receive a response memorandum explaining what we have done with your opinion.
- We will publish the response memorandum together with the submitted consultation responses. We will omit your name and address details.
- We also publish final decisions on officielebekendmakingen.nl and . We will make the response document available for public inspection upon publication of the final decision.
Do you disagree with the reply to your consultation response?
In many cases, you can appeal against the final decision to the administrative court. If this is the case, we will state this in the decision. An interested party who has not submitted a consultation response cannot appeal to the administrative court, unless this cannot reasonably be blamed on them.