The form of the new Construction Act raises concerns among the majority of civil engineers, technicians and entrepreneurs. According to them, the new law will not lead to an improvement and speeding up of building permits. This is the result of a survey of the Czech Chamber of Authorised Engineers and Technicians Active in Construction (ČKAIT), which was attended by 1,100 members of the chamber. According to the survey, the processing of building permits under the old Building Act takes several months in most cases and not years, as some politicians or analysts have pointed out. According to the ČKAIT, the later amendments were created without the necessary analysis of the actual length of the permit procedure and identification of the main procedural problems.
The new Construction Act, effective as of 1 July this year, establishes a new process for building permits and is to include, among other things, the digitisation of the construction procedure. Until 2027, however, it will be possible to permit constructions under the old Construction Act, which introduced the so-called joint planning and construction procedure in 2018. This is a process in which a building is both located and permitted, which, according to ČKAIT, significantly helps to speed up construction.
According to the survey, the average length of the zoning procedure under the old law for apartment buildings was five months, the same as for their building permit. Joint planning and building permit procedures for them took an average of six months and a median of three months. Tunnel constructions have the longest joint permitting process, with an average of almost a year. Conversely, warehouses or parking structures are the fastest to be jointly permitted, taking approximately less than five months. The same is true for houses and holiday homes. On average, they take four months to get a permit, and five months in the joint permitting process.
“Almost half of the participating authorized persons responded that the duration of most building permitting procedures in the country, including related engineering activities, is usually six months to one year. In practically all categories we encountered relatively more complex constructions permitted within a few days and relatively simple constructions with very problematic and long permitting procedures,” said Robert Špalek, chairman of ČKAIT.
According to the respondents, joint procedures for constructions over CZK 100 million saved on average more than five months in the permitting phase of a construction project. In some cases, however, zoning decisions or building permits were not issued even after several years. This was mainly due to court disputes.
According to Michal Drahorad, vice-chairman of ČKAIT, it was a mistake that the Building Act was changed without the necessary analysis of the actual length of the permitting procedure and identification of the main procedural problems. At the time, the law’s authors referred to the Doing Business ranking, which, however, the World Bank stopped publishing in 2020 due to unreliable data and misleading methodology. This year, the Ministry of Regional Development also objected to the ranking and questioned whether the Czech Republic should be the 33rd worst country surveyed in terms of the length of construction procedures.
Source: ČKAIT and CTK
