In some circumstances, the central government of Norway has the possibility to directly intervene in municipal land use planning. Such intervention is justified by projects of national and regional interest when the existing planning proposal or conflicting local interests do not guarantee a successful conversion of national or regional interests into the local planning document. The State authority in question will then assume responsibility for developing a so-called central government land use plan (statlig arealplan).
The development of such central government land use plans has until now been rare. However, the Norwegian government has stated that central government land use plans will be used more often for major infrastructure projects, and the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation of Norway (KMD) would like to gain insight on how similar countries use such a planning tool in the transport sector.
