The planned Highest Construction Office (Nejvyšší stavební úřad) and the system of regional construction offices subordinate to it will not be established in the Czech Republic. The construction authorities will remain within the municipalities, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reports.
The abolition of the pure state construction administration in the new 2021 Construction Act was approved by the Senate on Wednesday in a government amendment to the Construction Act. The construction authorities will remain within the municipalities. Only the Transport and Energy Construction Authority will be created, subordinated to the Ministry of Transport, which will be mainly responsible for transport and energy construction. The amendment to the new Construction Act, as approved, is intended to speed up and simplify construction procedures. It will now be submitted to the president for signature, writes ČTK.
Sixty-one of the 73 senators present voted in favour of the amendment. Two Senate committees recommended approval of the amendment as submitted. The Senators did not agree to the proposal of their Constitutional Law Committee to return the amendment to the Chamber. The committee wanted to include a rule that building authorities in municipalities should be preserved by law and not only by a decree of the Ministry of Regional Development. Regional Development Minister Ivan Bartoš (Pirates) disagreed. Zdeněk Nytra, the chairman of the ODS and TOP 09 senators' club, warned that in such a case the building authorities could only be abolished by amending the law.
The creation of a state construction administration and the transfer of construction offices to the state is planned in the new construction law of 2021, which was pushed through by the then government of Andrej Babiš (ANO). However, the then-opposition parties, which now form the ruling coalition, did not like the creation of the new state office and decided to abolish it. The amendment preserves the 694 current building offices in municipalities, with the possibility of reducing that number depending on building activity, about two dozen building offices also want to merge, according to Bartos. The amendment to the Construction Act is expected to come into force on 1 July 2024 and to apply to dedicated construction sites, such as highways or power plants, from 1 January 2024.
