Of the more than 3.500 companies that have submitted a PAS report, more than 2.400 remain that require a permit. This is reported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The majority of these detectors are agricultural, but they also include airports, industrial and construction projects.
According to the latest statement from the ministry, 2.442 companies have registered with a request for a new permit. This number is not expected to increase much. The number of companies mentioned includes almost 300 against which an enforcement request is already pending and the situation is extra pressing. The central government initially wanted to help legalize them as a priority, but the question is whether this will succeed.
Many enforcement requests in Flevoland
Many enforcement requests concern agricultural companies. This includes more than 150 companies in the province of Flevoland, but Lelystad Airport and Schiphol are also PAS detectors. The Ministries of Infrastructure and Water Management (I&W) and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) are particularly concerned about this category of reporters.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality does not provide a precise breakdown by category of companies. The ministry also says that it cannot indicate whether the more than 2.400 companies can all be regarded as 'real' PAS detectors, in the sense that they are also entitled to a permit. The ministry only knows who made a report and when. "Provinces know which initiators have been granted a permit and when," the ministry says. It is therefore possible that detectors who already had permit problems before the PAS will be dropped.
Also 'interims'
The ministry is concerned with the requirements that a PAS reporter must meet in order to obtain a permit. To this end, the reporter must have started an activity during the period that the PAS was in force (from July 1, 2015 to May 29, 2019), not before and not after. There is also a category of 'interims', companies that had received a permit for expansion prior to the implementation of the nature legislation, but could no longer continue. Exact numbers of these are not known.
As a reason for the significant decrease in the number of PAS reporters to be legalized, the ministry mentions possible double reports, or that companies no longer need a permit upon closer examination.