The Ministry did not discuss the draft of the building law with us, says the regional official

Brno - The preparation of the amendment to the building law, which is pending in the Chamber of Deputies, has not been discussed by the Ministry for Regional Development with those who work with it on a daily basis. This was stated to ČTK by Jana Janíková, head of the Department of Urban Planning of the South Moravian Region. According to her, officials at regional and municipal offices have been unsuccessfully demanding answers from the ministry to their questions and comments for more than five months. "Since mid-December last year, when the legislative proposal appeared in the Chamber, we have offered cooperation, we have been asking questions, but no one from the ministry communicates with us," said Janíková. Ministry spokesperson Veronika Lukášová wrote to ČTK that its representatives are in talks with officials.

In urban planning, Janíková has been active for four decades, but she has never experienced anything like this before. She considers the fourteenth amendment to the law, which only takes effect from mid-2024, to be so poor that she would prefer if politicians rejected it. "But I fear that they want to push it through at any cost, without realizing what impact it will have. People in the offices have been living in uncertainty for months, some are already leaving, while there are few qualified people for this work. This approach discourages them," Janíková said.

The amendment foresees a significant change in the urban planning system, and the functioning of building authorities is also set to change fundamentally, as a central building authority is to be established. Many officials do not know whether they will be employed by the municipality or the state, whether their positions will cease to exist, and whether they will have a place in the new system. "Some, for example, do not want to transition from the municipality to the state," Janíková said.

She is surprised by how the amendment was created and also by the ministry's inability and unwillingness to communicate about its principles and impacts. Instead, it has hired so-called coordinators to explain it to various regions. "But instead, those people come to ask us, they have nothing to do with public administration. In the case of the South Moravian coordinator, it is a real estate agent," said Janíková. One of the coordinators is, for example, Kevin Dostál, the son of former Minister Klára Dostálová from the ANO party, a graduate of a hotel school. People from the offices, according to Janíková, thus only speculate about certain things and try to find information themselves when the ministry remains silent.

Lukášová stated that the coordinators are to function as an "extended arm of the ministry" and their task is "to collect data from the field and ensure communication throughout the process" and do not need specialized knowledge of building law. However, when on May 22 a coordinator requested a visit with the director of the regional office, he refused to meet with officials and only met with the secretaries of municipalities in the region the following Wednesday. "It turned out that he does not understand the content of the amendment," she said.

Lukášová indicated that once the final text of the law is available, the ministry will start expert training. However, according to Janíková, this will not solve the issue that the law will lack internal logic and the paragraphs will be unconnected. She reminded that when the previous law, which was in effect from 2007 to 2024, was created, the preparation was gradual and discussed with experts. The new elements that were introduced were piloted. All of this is now lacking. "We do not know who wrote that law. There are speculations about large developer groups for whom the law contains incomprehensible benefits. We do not know what the mandate was, but we see that the person who created the amendment does not understand how things work. We do not know what the aim of the change is and why functioning procedures are being abolished," Janíková said. She added that there is not even an economic evaluation of the changes, so no one knows how much it will cost the state.

According to her, although the creators have at least partially modified the amendment according to the comments and corrected some mistakes, many remain. She doubts that the amendment, as it is prepared, will speed up and simplify the building process, as politicians promise. She predicts the same fate for it as befell the digitalization of the building process introduced by the Pirate Minister Ivan Bartoš. "The law was then written by IT specialists, without consulting those who were supposed to work with the system. The same mistake is happening now. Comments directed at the ministry are disappearing somewhere in a black hole," Janíková noted.