The Brussels Town Planning Code (CoBAT/BWRO) sets out a number of measures to protect immovable heritage. Inclusion on the conservation list and classification are the best-known and most restrictive measures, but there is also a third: inclusion on the legal inventory of immovable heritage.
Inventories are genuine tools for raising public awareness, and draw the attention of owners and authorities to the heritage interest of a property. They are also a tool for managing heritage at local level. This is the first level of recognition defined by the Brussels Town Planning Code.
On August 19th 2024, the Brussels government, with the help of Urban, published the legal inventory of immovable heritage, which includes trees, monuments and complexes, in the Belgian Official Journal.
No fewer than 40,000 properties (including more than 4,000 from the 1939-1999 inventory of architectural heritage) and 3,000 trees are now listed in the legal inventory of the Brussels Capital Region’s immovable heritage. The properties likely to be included in the inventory have been identified and selected using a scientific method, described in the government decree on the inventory of the Brussels Capital Region’s immovable heritage, which makes it possible to assess their heritage value.
In practice
This government decision has many consequences:
- Establishing the legal inventory automatically puts an end to the application of the transitional measure in article 333 of the Brussels Town Planning Code, pursuant to which all monuments and complexes for which a building permit had been issued or which had been built before 1 January 1932 were considered to be listed in the inventory of immovable heritage.
- Secondly, when a property is listed in the legal inventory, any permit request for this property must be submitted for an opinion to the consultation committee, which may decide to request the opinion of the Royal Commission for Monuments and Sites (CRMS/KCML).
- For remarkable trees, planning permission is now required to change their silhouette. → more information
- There are no changes to the legal inventory of sites that was already published in the Belgian Official Journal on 22 September 1995.
Some useful links if you would like to find out more
- Government decree on the inventory of the Brussels Capital Region’s immovable heritage
- More information about the inventory of immovable heritage
- The inventory of immovable heritage (including the legal inventory of immovable heritage)
- The inventory of natural heritage (including the legal inventory of immovable heritage)
Check out the legal inventory of immovable heritage on BruGIS as well
You can also consult the additional information sheets for remarkable trees, sites, complexes and monuments in the Brussels Capital Region on the BruGIS online tool.
→ Browse BruGIS