It can be difficult for a layman to navigate all the new features of the new Building Act. We always bring our clients from real estate agencies, developers and construction companies fresh information from this area, organize training sessions and workshops and we want to bring a summary of the most important things to the general public. We wrote about the changes in the Building Act ↗ at the end of June and now comes the second part of the series, which will shine a light on the building authorities, the Builder's Portal and the issuance of opinions for construction proceedings.
Arguably the biggest fuss has arisen around building authorities. The main problem in navigating the new Building Act for most people is that the Act has undergone several amendments before it came into full force on 1 July 2024. These have substantially affected the organization of building authorities.
In the original draft of the law, it was envisaged that a state administration of building authorities would be established, headed by the Supreme Building Authority, with regional building authorities subordinate to it at the regional level. This was the case until the first half of 2023, when the final decision was made to abolish the new organization of the building authorities and to return to the original concept: to maintain the building authorities at the municipal level with superior regional building authorities.
Two new developments did occur, one as a direct consequence of the new Building Act, the other as an indirect consequence.
The creation of the Transport and Energy Building Authority
A direct consequence of the new Building Act is the establishment of the Transport and Energy Building Authority. Typically, larger businesses will come into contact with this Authority, as it exercises its competence as a building authority for reserved buildings. You might have read which buildings are considered reserved buildings in the article on Classification of buildings according to the Building Act, but we will also address it in this series. In general, however, these buildings serve publicly beneficial interest. These are, for example, highways, railways, civil aviation structures. Photovoltaic power stations with a total installed electrical capacity of over 5 MW, for example, will also be affected, i.e. the largest ones. Ordinary photovoltaic power systems, for example on the roof of a family house, will not be dealt with by the Transport and Energy Building Office.
An indirect consequence is the establishment of a centralized building authority for the city of Brno, which was decided by the city council at the end of 2023. Thus, within Brno, the building offices in the individual city districts will be abolished and a central one will be created to handle the entire agenda. The justification for this move was the new Building Act law and the associated digitalization, which is supposed to facilitate the centralization of the building authority.
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Another innovation is closely related to the topic of building authorities, namely the much discussed Builder's Portal. It has been the subject of discussion mainly because the Office for the Protection of Competition intervened in its preparation and suspended the performance of the contract with the system developer in the future. There were concerns about whether the portal would be launched on time and whether it would be functional at all.
However, the current version of the portal was launched on 1 July 2024 and submissions to the building authorities can already be made through the portal. As such, the portal is a result of the digitization of building procedures and serves to communicate electronically with the building authorities, to submit applications and to monitor the progress of building procedures. It is therefore certainly a positive step forward, and we can only hope that the prohibition of contract performance by the Office for the Protection of Competition will not have a negative impact on the entire system.
The new Building Act aims to speed up and simplify the building procedure. It is still very early to assess whether this goal will be achieved, but one positive change that may lead to this goal has remained a little out of sight.
In the case of an appeal under the old Building Act, the appellate building authority could either revoke the original decision and stop the proceedings or revoke and return the case to the original building authority, or amend the decision. It is probably not necessary to point out that the revocation and return, which was certainly not an exceptional procedure, made the whole procedure very protracted. However, according to the new Building Act, the appellate building authority is obliged to directly amend the incorrect decision in the case of an application procedure (e.g. an application for a building permit). This change, which at first sight may not seem very significant to some, can have a very positive impact on the speed of the building procedure and significantly reduce the delays that arise during the procedure dure to repeated revocations and returns of decisions.
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The area of issuing opinions for building proceedings would be worth an article in itself, as it is an issue that causes builders to frown. However, there have been several changes in this area as well.
One major change, with the potential to simplify and speed up building procedures, is the introduction of the Single Environmental Opinion. It is not regulated directly in the Building Act, but in Act No 148/2023 Coll. on the Single Environmental Opinion. However, as it is issued primarily for the purposes of the building procedure, information about it clearly belongs in this article.
As stated above, the aim of this opinion is simplification for builders. The opinion unifies assessments that would otherwise have to be requested under several environmental and health laws. As the Ministry of the Environment states on its website, the Single Environmental Opinion is issued instead of up to 26 administrative acts contained in 9 different environmental laws. These include the Air Protection Act, the Water Act and the Environmental Impact Assessment Act.
A partial change also concerns the area of coordinated binding opinions. This institution, where one respective authority issues one coordinated binding opinion regarding all affected public interests that it defends was already introduced by the previous Building Act. The new Building Act then takes over the regulation in essential points. However, there is a change in the period for which the coordinated binding opinion is valid. In the previous legislation, there was no general period of validity, it was set only for specific cases (e.g. 2 years in the case of a binding opinion of a spatial planning authority), and if it was not specified, it was valid until the conditions on which the authority based its opinion changed.
However, the new Building Act sets a general validity period of 5 years from the date of issue. However, it is still valid that other laws may specify a different period of validity for binding opinions, for example, an opinion under the Environmental Impact Assessment Act is valid for 7 years from the date of its issue.
Being able to solve real problems for real people is an activity that fulfills me. In my practice, I originally focused mainly on enforcement law, but in recent years my specialty has become civil law. I mainly deal with real estate law, but I also provide consultations in the field of e-commerce.
