The amendment to the Building Act is accompanied by disputes. However, it should have been in effect since the summer.
The amendment to the Building Act, which is to take effect from the middle of next year, is said to speed up project preparation. It introduces the principle of one office, one proceeding, and one stamp. However, the Czech Chamber of Authorized Engineers and Technicians Active in Construction has already expressed that the planned change will not solve the complicated permitting and construction in reality.
Debates have been going on for a long time about how to fix the inadequate building law adopted in 2021. The situation is serious. The number of building permits issued from this January to September has dropped to the lowest level since 1999. Only 45,818 construction plans were approved in the first nine months. Everything is set to change with the amendment that the new government of Andrej Babiš is bringing in.
The amendment is meant to kickstart housing construction
The construction of mass housing, i.e. buildings with a total floor area of over 10 thousand square meters, is therefore also to be of public interest from the middle of next year. According to the explanatory report of the amendment to the building law, which was approved by the government of Andrej Babiš as one of the first, these should be buildings with at least a hundred apartments. Decisions on these buildings will be made in one stage by the new Office for Territorial Development of the Czech Republic. Officials who currently perform building administration under regions and municipalities will move under its control.
The mentioned system introduces the principle of one office, one procedure and one stamp, which eliminates the current dualism and the number of binding opinions from various institutions. The aim of the proposed changes should be to conclude one permission with the least amount of individual supporting acts. The amendment will also enable expropriation for the construction of connections to transport and technical infrastructure.
"In general, it can be summarized that with the adoption of the law proposal, thanks to the significant acceleration and efficiency of spatial planning and construction permitting, as well as focusing on development and ensuring the needs of people's lives, there will be a significant economic revival and economic growth, and thus increase in the state's tax revenues into public budgets,"
is stated in the reasoning report.
Criticism of Experts
The Czech Chamber of Authorized Engineers and Technicians active in construction (ČKAIT), however, claims that the changes do not take into account the opinions of those who work with the building law on a daily basis.
"Building law cannot be created in the offices of politicians and lawyers, experts who work with it in their daily practice must always be involved in it. That's why we have prepared a clear plan, according to which the coalition, hopefully with understanding and support from the opposition, should proceed. When making adjustments and changes to construction law, the slogan 'No time to waste time' should definitely not apply, but 'Measure twice, cut once',"
wrote LP-Life chairman of the chamber Robert Špalek.
The fact that the newly proposed steps build on what the former Minister for Local Development for the ANO movement, Klára Dostálová, advocated, is a problem seen by the chamber. In May 2021, Dostálová proclaimed that instead of stamp chasing, construction will finally resume again.
"The aim of this law is a drastic acceleration of the permit process, compliance with deadlines, scalability of officials, and digitization. Simply put, so that the builder does not run around offices, but solves everything from the comfort of home from the table. If everything is in order, he can have a building permit for a house in so-called accelerated proceedings in hand in just thirty days. A major investor then within a year,"
Emphasized then in a press release Dostálová.
The amendment should be tailored urgently
The Chamber appreciates on one hand that the proposal of Babiš's movement politician leads to a reduction of the number of building offices, postponement of digitalization until 2030 or acceptance of a so-called wide bypass, which would allow the submission of project documentation as part of applications for building permits also in paper form, but at the same time warns against uncritical return to the original wording of the law from 2021. According to her, this document created fundamental collisions and problems, which were fully exposed only in the last months. Their focus, as the Chamber claims, is not just in the law itself overlapping into the competences of seven ministries, but also in its implementing regulations covering a huge variety of all categories and types of buildings. The sector platform therefore prefers a professionally prepared comprehensive amendment to the current building law, which would be also applied to dozens of other laws.
The subject of the Supreme Building Office itself is, according to the chamber, not so crucial. If designers and builders continue to sink in uncertainty about how to design, execute and approve buildings, and how these buildings should be subsequently operated, the miserable situation will not change.
"First and foremost, we would welcome an analysis preceding the concentration of building authorities, especially in terms of personnel and competence coverage. It's not just about stamps, to put it simply, but above all the unification and covering of methods and procedures, according to which applications are evaluated. It is not enough to facilitate the approval of constructions as much as possible. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The whole process from preparation and approval, through realization, acceptance and up to subsequent trouble-free use, must be considered,"
stated in a press release Deputy Chairman Michal Drahorád.
However, Babiš's government does not pay much attention to expert criticisms. It expects that the general effectiveness of the amendment should apply from the 1st of July. And from January 1, 2028, there should be a functional organizational structure of the new construction super office ... .
Sources: author's text, own questioning, ČTK, MMR ČR, ČKAIT
