OFFPHD-Offentlig sektor-ph.d.

In the thesis, older legislation and practice for handling streets and roads as public ground ("non-property") is set in context with problems related to current cadastral information on road ownership and road boundaries. The cadastral information is used by many people who are not aware that the system has no legal credibility, and some common consequences of the cadastral map lacking or having misleading information about road conditions are incorrect area information in sales documents, conflicts between the road authorities and private landowners about the right to road land and side areas that apparently is part of the privately owned unit and problems related to the cadastral register not working well as a system for neighbour notification. Improving the quality of cadastral information will reduce such problems, but one of the conclusions in the thesis is that different property perceptions and purpose assessments affect the current case management to a greater extent than has so far been realised, and that this often makes it difficult to do something about the existing information. Another conclusion is that the current Road Act contributes to intensifying this problem because it dates from 1963 and is still characterized by the fact that road ground at that time was to be kept out of the property registers. This makes it difficult to harmonize the regulations for processing property changes (the Planning and Building Act, the Cadastral Act and the Land Registry Act) with the Roads Act's system. The recommendations are based on the fact that the conclusions have revealed a need to clarify and harmonize the scope of the relevant laws. As part of this work, a new Road Act should be drafted in which the ownership-related provisions in the Road Act are based on the other laws' system for handling cases related to ownership, but with the special provisions for road ground appearing in the Roads Act. Until this happens, however, emphasis must be placed on clarifying how far the purposes of the various laws are to be emphasized in situations where they are perceived as contradictory. An example of this is the Cadstral Act's provisions on conditions for the creation of construction property, which are based on the fact that these must provide security as mortgage objects, but which can therefore also make it difficult to get tunnels registered as construction property. The provisions on private roads, which are currently in Chapter VII of the Roads Act, should be transferred to a separate act. This should be done to clarify that the distinction between public and private roads is not necessarily related to who is registered as the owner of the road groud and to purify the Road Act as a public law, but also to simplify the legislation on private roads. Provisions with significance for such roads are currently spread over a number of laws, which makes it difficult for private road users to get an overview of the regulations and also can lead to cases that are basically the same being treated differently in the legal system. In the thesis, emphasis is placed on clarifying the historical distinction between roads and streets. Ground needed for roads and streets was long ceded on the basis of two completely different pieces of legislation (the road legislation and the building legislation), where the distinction was based on whether the area was covered by the building legislation or not. This is something that must be taken into account when clarifying ownership today, and the development of the two legislation systems and the practical consequences of both legal bases are explained in the thesis, but particular emphasis is placed on problems related to areas regulated by the Building Act “on country ground". The historical distinction between streets and roads is also something that speaks in favour of the legislation on private roads being transferred to a separate act. There may be different legal consequences of a road being classified as private as a result of a Building Act-related terms than if it is a former public road that has been downclassified to a private road, and it is therefore unfortunate that the provisions on private roads in Chapter VII of the current Roads Act is based on the system as it was before 1963/64 and does not differentiate between different forms of private road.

Den viktigste oppnådde effekten er at det rettslige grunnlaget og den historiske saksbehandlingen nå er dokumentert. Samtidig har arbeidet avdekket at institusjonelle forhold utgjør en større del av dagens problemer enn det som var antatt. Dette gjelder både måten bevisste og ubevisste formålsbetraktninger har påvirket utviklingen av lovverket på og måten formålsvurderingene styrer de ulike etatenes saksbehandling, Det har ført til at det ble svært tydelig at dagens veglov er en del av problemet fordi de eierskapsrelaterte bestemmelsene i loven gjennomgående er basert på en utdatert måte å behandle veggrunnen på i eiendomssammenheng. Dermed ble konklusjonen at det ikke er tilstrekkelig å gjennomføre mindre lovendringer, men bør arbeides for å få en ny veglov som forholder seg til dagens system for delesaksbehandling og matrikkelføring. Selv om konklusjonen er at dagens veglov ikke er noe godt utgangspunkt for arbeidet med å harmonisere lovverket med tanke på behandlingen av nye saker, har prosjektet gitt svar på mange spørsmål som har skapt usikkerhet tidligere. Dette bør gjøre det enklere å få registrert informasjon om eiendomsforholdene med grunnlag i eldre dokumentasjon, og det kommer derfor til å bli arbeidet videre med å samle og strukturere denne dokumentasjonen.

Det sentrale norske eiendomsregisteret, matrikkelen, mangler mye informasjon om vegeiendomsforhold og -grenser. Informasjonen ligger ofte i et offentlig arkiv, men er aldri lagt inn i matrikkelkartet. Den historiske årsaken er at veggrunn ikke var omfattet av noen eiendomsregistreringsplikt før 1980 og at informasjon om grunnavståelser derfor heller ikke ble notert i grunnbøkene («tinglyst»). Årsaken til at eksisterende informasjon fortsatt ikke er registrert i matrikkelen, oppfattes særlig å være at de offentligrettslig baserte grunnavståelsesprosessene ikke var noe man vurderte eller tok hensyn til i arbeidet med lovene som regulerer matrikkelregistreringsområdet. Det har resultert i at Norge har fått et matrikkelregistreringssystem der privatrettslig basert informasjon fra grunnbokssystemet tillegges stor vekt, mens bl.a pliktavståelsesbestemmelser i eldre bygningslover ikke er anerkjent som rettingsgrunnlag. Det kan derfor være vanskelig å få registrert eksisterende veginformasjon uten omfattende kommunal/tinglysingsrelatert saksbehandling og/eller sak for jordskifteretten. Prosjektets målsetting er derfor å dokumentere det historiske lovgrunnlaget og den administrative gjennomføringen av avståelse av grunn til veger og gater og foreslå endringer/tiltak for en bedre og mer effektiv matrikkelregistreringsprosess. Største utfordring i prosjektet vil antakelig bli å avdekke om problemet hovedsakelig er av juridisk art eller om kulturelle forskjeller i ulike administrative systemer påvirker lovforståelsen og resultatene i større grad enn de juridiske forholdene gjør.