The introduction of a ten-week time limit in processing building permits, that came in legislation introduced in 2011, has sins its addition been under constant discussion. Mainly due to the fact that big variations in the time needed to get permits has become a reality over the country and that the ten-week limit is not held sufficiently. To address this problem, the government of Sweden came with a proposition. A reduction on building permits fees would be introduced. The idea was that fees were to be reduced by 20% for every week the handling exceeded the ten-week time limit. From the 1 of january 2019, the law is in effect. 

How can this potentially effect the building committees economically and what will the results be for applicants and the municipality? That’s what this report seeks to find answers to. 

The report has calculated the fees on a referents year (2018), using statistics from Umeå county’s board of construction. This has given a god estimate on the possible size of the reductions if the working methods don’t change. During the work with the report two key people in Umeå county’s organization has been available for questions and information, they work as town architect and administrator.         

The result shows that the reductions can turn out to be an economical problem for the board of construction mainly because they use fees to finance their organization. In Umeå county, the fees stand for 93% of all revenues. If the referents year 2018 would be subdued to reductions on permit fees, it would have cost over 12% of total profits by revenues during that year. This makes it very likely that short processing times from now on will be a priority, otherwise reductions can be a severe economic threat. An Increase in stress for people working with permits seems also already to have been an effect. Different ways to make the process faster and more effective has also been discussed, for example the meeting routines for the board of constriction. For the applicants the view is brighter, mainly because it can have to effects: ether the processing time becomes faster or they will get a reduction in price. However, one possible negative is detected that can become a reality. The law states that if there is special circumstances the process time can be prolonged by ten more weeks. This could be used as a loophole to avoid reductions in a non-ethical way. This could mean that certain permits will have longer processing times in the future.