The amendment to the building law is facing further delays

Prague - The amendment to the building code has experienced further delays. The Ministry for Regional Development (MMR) was supposed to send it to the government office in a postponed deadline during October, but it is unlikely to meet that deadline. This was acknowledged today by Marcela Pavlová, the director of the Building Code Department of MMR, at the professional real estate conference Real Estate Market organized by the Stavební fórum portal. Her department is preparing the amendment. The original deadline was the end of June.
    The most significant change that the planned adjustments bring is the merging of the permitting process into a single proceeding. The so-called coordinated permitting procedure should merge the currently separated zoning process, construction proceedings, and environmental impact assessments, known as the EIA process. According to the ministry, this is expected to significantly speed up the approval of construction projects.
    "Whenever the building code is opened, it opens Pandora's box. Everyone has built something at some point and has something they didn't like. Therefore, everyone feels the need to express their opinion on it. This is evidenced by the number of comments we received. We recorded over 2100, of which 1800 were substantial. We must address those," said Pavlová.
    According to her, 1540 comments were directly related to the amendment of the building code. "About half of all comments went beyond the scope of the law. They addressed something that was not part of the amendment and is not changing," added Pavlová.
    The enormous number of comments forced the ministry to adopt an unconventional approach to resolving them. "Throughout September, five full-day meetings were held with representatives of the commenting bodies, during which the comments were resolved in a conference manner," explained Pavlová. She previously stated that four people are working on addressing the comments, with other colleagues assisting them.
    The ministry also hopes that the amendment will ease the process for small builders. It will allow, for example, self-built construction for all types of family houses without determining the built-up area. On the property of a family house or a house designated for recreation, anyone will be able to build a pool or a greenhouse solely based on their placement without subsequent permitting.
    All planning documents will be required to be published on the internet, allowing the public better oversight of the entire process.
    Originally, the amendment was supposed to take effect by the middle of next year, but the date was then pushed to the end of the year. Now MMR talks about the effectiveness starting in January 2017.