Building Permit Procedures in Switzerland: Why Fewer Rules Mean More Housing

2 Sep 2026

More than a decade ago, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) put the regulatory costs of building construction alone at around 1.6 billion Swiss francs per year, almost 6 per cent of the construction volume[1], and the density of regulation has only grown since. Yet a convenient reflex has taken hold: Berne should solve the problem, and faster procedures would suffice. Both assumptions fall short. Anyone who reads the Federal Council’s report of 2 April 2026 on accelerating procedures in spatial planning and construction law[2] will see: under the Constitution, the federal government can deliver only part of the solution, and even where it does have jurisdiction, mere acceleration does little to address the underlying cause.

Who is responsible for building permit procedures and construction law in Switzerland?

Under Article 75 paragraph 1 of the Federal Constitution (Cst.), the Confederation has the power to lay down principles in the field of spatial planning. Implementation lies with the cantons, and construction law itself is essentially a cantonal matter. The Confederation regulates what is of national significance and must leave the cantons the greatest possible latitude in implementation, as their procedural sovereignty and organisational autonomy require (Article 46 paragraph 3 and Article 47 Cst.).[3] Every measure to accelerate procedures must be measured against this division of responsibilities.

Which acceleration measures has the Federal Council examined, and why does it reject most of them?

The Federal Council’s report carefully examines the most obvious proposals, from imposing costs on unsuccessful objectors to automatic approval once a deadline expires. For most of them, it concludes that they would encroach on cantonal procedural sovereignty or touch fundamental rights such as the right to be heard (Article 29 paragraph 2 Cst.) and the procedural guarantees of neighbours. This is not restraint born of convenience; it is the logical consequence of the constitutional allocation of powers.

«In this field, the Confederation can only do what the Constitution allows it to do: no more and no less.»

What can the Confederation actually deliver?

That leaves three or four measures for which the Confederation is genuinely competent: declaring housing construction a matter of national interest, narrowing standing to appeal, and restricting the grounds of appeal before the Federal Supreme Court. These are important but inherently limited levers: they concern proceedings before the Federal Supreme Court, the last of several instances, and not necessarily the place where the greatest delay arises. Zurich’s Seebahn-Höfe illustrate the point: the housing cooperatives ABZ and BEP have been planning the renewal of their late-1920s estates for some twenty years: 350 new cooperative apartments, housing for 1,000 instead of the current 500 residents.[4] After years of heritage-protection debates and the design-plan procedure, the project then faced a popular referendum in November 2025.[5] These delays lie outside what the Confederation may regulate: the challenge was never the procedure alone, but the sheer volume of substantive questions that had to be resolved.

Why does the body of rules keep growing regardless?

Two recent official examples show how quickly the rulebook is growing: the Special Building Ordinance I of the Canton of Zurich was expanded by roughly one third with the 2022 energy-law revision[6], and the latest revision of the Spatial Planning Act lengthens the revised articles by a similar order of magnitude.[7] Added to this is the cumulative effect of environmental, noise-protection, heritage-protection, climate and energy law at every level, federal, cantonal and municipal, each tightened independently of the others and overlapping in practice. Oliver Streiff, professor of public law at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), describes this layering of rules from different fields of law as the core problem of today’s spatial planning and construction law.[8] That matches practical experience: a building application today passes through the building authority and the energy, noise, water-protection and transport agencies; each pursues its own specialised law, and every round of follow-up requests prolongs the procedure, regardless of how digital the form is or how far Berne narrows standing to appeal. Each revision is well founded on its own; taken together, they produce a body of rules that no developer can still keep track of, and that even a faster procedure does not make any smaller.

«More complex rules do not produce better buildings. They produce higher costs for the state, the authorities and developers, and they prevent housing that Switzerland urgently needs.»

What would actually help against the housing shortage?

Hans Wicki, president of the construction-industry umbrella organisation Bauenschweiz, puts it in a nutshell: real relief would come only from a substantial reduction of rules at every level and in every specialist field, not just in procedural law, and not just in Berne. The Canton of Zug is testing precisely this path with its «white zones»: building zones in which practically all customary building regulations would be suspended: no minimum distances, no height limits, with only safety-relevant standards remaining in force.[9] Jean-François Steiert, president of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Directors of Public Works, Planning and Environmental Protection (BPUK), adds: the cantons must learn again to think free of norms. This is the right lever, but a legally delicate one: whoever abolishes rules must clarify who is liable if something goes wrong without boundary distances, because the strict liability of the owner of a structure under Article 58 of the Code of Obligations (CO) does not automatically fall away with them.[10] That is painstaking work for cantonal lawyers, not for the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC).

Meanwhile, construction activity is declining: while a good 53,000 new apartments came onto the market in 2018, the most recent figure is around 43,000; with demand running at roughly 50,000 units per year, this opens up a gap of 7,000 to 10,000 apartments, year after year.[11] The decisive point is a finding that gets lost in the debate about speed: the complexity of the rules does not lead to better outcomes. It leads to a higher state quota, to higher costs in the building authorities that must cope with the ever-growing burden of review, and to higher costs for property developers, who ultimately finance it. Above all, it prevents urgently needed projects: first and foremost new housing, which is enormously important for Switzerland. The Confederation can use its constitutional framework and thereby makes an important, if limited, contribution. But the real reduction of rules can only be achieved by the Confederation and the cantons together, each within its own sphere of responsibility. More will only be built again when a construction project has to satisfy fewer rules, not merely the same rules faster.

Dr. iur. Alexander Schiemenz is a founding partner of LINDEMANNLAW, attorney-at-law, tax adviser, real estate developer and investor.

How We Can Help

Are you planning a real estate project, facing a lengthy building permit procedure, or assessing the legal and liability implications of new construction regulations? LINDEMANNLAW advises developers, investors and public authorities on Swiss construction, planning and real estate law. Contact us. We are happy to assist you.

Read the full article on Finanz und Wirtschaft (FuW): Regulierungswut: Schnellere Bauverfahren lösen die Wohnungsnot nicht