According to ecologists, the new building law is significantly worsening environmental protection. According to them, it is wrong that only building authorities should decide on the felling of trees or the occupation of agricultural land said representatives of the Association of Ecological Organizations Zelený kruh and Hnutí Duha.. The new legislation will also not help people. The law was approved by the House on Wednesday. It is intended to replace the current 2006 law and to simplify and speed up construction proceedings.
The Chamber of Deputies approved the law against the original government proposal by transferring all building authorities to the state. They will fall under the Supreme Building Authority and will be organized similarly to, for example, the tax authorities.
“The just approved building law significantly worsens the protection of the environment. The felling of trees, interventions in forests, occupation of agricultural land will now be decided only by building authorities. That is, authorities that are supposed to encourage construction in job descriptions,” Petra Kolínská told the press Wednesday.
“Building authorities will even have the final say in construction in national parks. The promised improvements – that is, the enforcement of deadlines or the strengthening of municipal powers in spatial planning – have not come into law,” she added. According to the association, the new law will thus worsen the position of all actors. Environmentalists demand that the Senate reject it.
“From the point of view of the landscape, national parks, protected landscape areas and reservations, the new building law in the longer term will lead to a not fully coordinated development of the landscape. It is critical to limit the powers of national park administrations, protected landscape areas and reservations to regulate development. “Actually, all processes that go outside the so-called regulatory plan will go outside the national park administration. Now the building authority will do it,” he said. He also noted that a civil engineer looks at landscape protection differently from a landscape architect or biologist.
Environmental organizations also do not like the fact that the builder’s request is decided by an official who is “hundreds of kilometers away” and does not know the local conditions. They also mentioned the fear that the centralized building authority would be more prone to corruption, and that the law did not contain any anti-corruption safeguards.
As the advantages of the law, they mentioned the end of the division into territorial and construction proceedings and the fact that, according to the law, green infrastructure would be a new part of public infrastructure. He also sees the electronicization of the agenda as a positive – for example, applicants will be able to upload documentation via the builder’s portal electronically. Nevertheless, according to ecologists, this is such a poorly prepared law that it needs to be reworked and approved in the new election period.
“The proposal does not even meet what it was being prepared with. The fact that it should speed up the permitting of constructions. Which is needed, no one doubts that the current deadlines are very long. the proposal did not even ensure this, “said Bláha.
Now the law will be discussed by the Senate. It is to apply from July 1, 2023, but from January next year, according to him, new officials will be able to start hiring. Minister for Regional Development Klára Dostálová (for YES) has previously said that 5,000 to 6,000 people could be transferred to the state administration from the current building authorities. According to the Ministry of Regional Development, officials will lose up to 40 percent of the agenda.
Source: CTK
