A permit that arrived after the season had begun

Letter from the table

RC/RT/2026/T.12 · 22 June 2026

I write from Stockholm, and I write in support of the Red Tape Council’s proposed Small Business Impact Standard. I also write as a translation of what owners in my language community are saying. Their businesses differ. The repeated experience is that a permit can be small in the eyes of an administration and large in the calendar and cash flow of the person waiting for it.

My own case concerns permission to use part of the public space outside the premises I rent. I hoped to place a few tables there for the warmer months. This was not a plan to change the building or block the pavement. It was a modest seasonal use, subject to the rules for public places. In Sweden, permission to use a public place is handled by the Police Authority under the Public Order Act, and the municipality has a role in the decision. In Stockholm, the city’s view and requirements matter because the space is public land.

On 3 March 2025, I submitted an application to the Police Authority. I paid the 990 kronor application fee. I included a sketch showing the proposed area, the dimensions and the period requested. On 13 March, I was asked to provide a clearer drawing. I understood the request; the first sketch had been made by me, not by a person who prepares plans for a living. I returned a revised drawing on 19 March.

After that, I waited. I called to check whether anything else was needed. I was told that the application was being handled and that the city’s assessment formed part of the process. I did not expect an officer to promise a decision before seeing the file. I did need to know whether I

should continue planning for the season, and when I could reasonably expect an answer. I could not get a date that I could use for that decision.

By then, I had already paid rent of 18,700 kronor for the month. I had also reserved 2,400 kronor for the small practical preparations needed if permission came through. I did not spend that money immediately, because spending before approval would have been unwise. But postponing the preparations had a cost too: the useful weeks of the season were passing while I tried to avoid taking a risk that the rules themselves did not require me to take.

The permission arrived on 6 May. I was relieved. I was also left with a narrower season than the one for which I had applied. The decision was not the problem; I was not asking for permission to ignore safety or public order. The problem was the period of uncertainty, and the fact that a small operator has to keep making business decisions while the administrative clock is invisible.

When I compare notes with other owners who speak Swedish at our tables, I hear different details but a familiar structure. One person is waiting for a sign or street-use approval; another has to correct a drawing; another does not know whether an application is complete. People are not asking to be excused from rules. They ask what is required, who is responsible for the next step, and how long that step normally takes. If they cannot get those answers, they cannot plan staff, purchases, opening dates or cash.

This is why I support the proposed standard. A small-business impact test would ask, before a new rule is put in place, whether the steps and costs are manageable for a very small operator as well as for a large organisation. A one-stop digital process should show the applicant what has been received, what remains outstanding, which authority is handling the next stage, and whether the municipality has been asked for its view. Published service times would not guarantee that every case is identical. They would make the ordinary case visible and make delay something that can be explained.

I also support a deadline after which silence counts as consent for permits, provided the rule is designed with care. It should apply where the application is complete, the deadline is clear, and the authority has had a fair opportunity to raise a safety or public-order objection. It should not mean that an applicant can bypass an explicit rule, or that urgent public concerns are ignored. But where no decision or request for information is made by the published deadline, the burden should not fall indefinitely on the person who has already supplied what was asked.

For me, the change would have been practical. If I had seen a service time, I could have planned around it. If the file had shown that the city’s assessment was pending, I would have known where the delay sat. If the authority needed a different drawing, a one-stop process could have made the requirement clear at the start. And if the deadline had passed without a response, there would have been a defined next step instead of another call asking whether anyone could tell me when to call again.