Just over a year ago, on 19 September 2020, a wide ranging amendment to the Polish
construction law aimed at expediting construction projects came into effect.. The
legislation – The Act of 13 February 2020 amending the Construction Law and some other
acts (henceforth Amendment) – encompassed nearly 60 provisions which were aimed at
e at simplifying and accelerating the investment and construction process. . We discussed
key changes in a two-part legal commentary that was published in August 2020 and
September 2020 issues of PMR Construction Insight: Poland. One of the most important
changes concerned construction projects itself.
Pursuant to the Amendment, the new form of construction project consists of three
parts: the site/plot development design, the architectural and building design, and the
technical design. The technical design is no longer subject to approval of architectural and
construction administration body as part of the building permit process, but as part of the
occupancy permit process. The second significant change concerning the construction
project is the limitation of the number of copies of the project attached to the building
permit application from four to three.
Article 26 of the Amendment introduced a 12-month transition period during which it was
up to the investor to decide at his own discretion whether he would prepare a construction
project in accordance with the previous construction law wording or intend to take
advantage of the amended provisions in this regard.. Importantly, the choice of form of the
construction project also determined which regulations, the original or amended ones,
would apply to the entire investment process (Article 27 of the Amendment).
This 12-month transition period expired on 19 September 2021. This means that from that
date the investor no longer has a free choice in terms of the form of the project, and thus
is obliged to apply the new provisions of the construction law, both in terms of the form of
the project and the procedure for obtaining a building permit.
In practice, the overwhelming majority of investors decided during the transitional period to
choose the previous form of construction projects and well-known regulations governing
the course of the investment process.
Our experience also shows that the transitional period, which was intended to allow
architectural and construction administration authorities to prepare to conduct
proceedings based on new legal conditions and to develop consistent procedures and
uniform interpretation of regulations, was mostly not properly used. A small number of
administrative proceedings conducted under the new regulations and the ongoing
pandemic, as a result of which public institutions were closed for some time and employees
of administrative bodies could not participate in trainings, will obviously translate into the
efficiency and duration of proceedings conducted under the new regulations .
Considering the end of the transition period, all investors who have so far applied the
previous wording of regulation to construction projects should urgently familiarise
themselves with the new regulations.
Grzegorz Zebrowski, Attorney-at-law
Miller, Canfield, W. Babicki, A. Chełchowski i Wspólnicy Sp.k.