Amendments to the Construction Law will speed up the coordination of construction projects
The Alliance of Real Estate Developers welcomes the amendments to the Construction Law adopted by the parliament of Latvia, which entered into force on 19 May this year. The main changes include the silence as acceptance principle, which will make the process of approving construction projects in the construction board more efficient, and the need for a separate court decision to suspend construction works in case the construction permit is contested. However, in order for the silence as acceptance or default principle to start working in practice, the Cabinet of Ministers has yet to develop regulations specifying the cases in which the principle can be applied. The industry calls for the rules to be drafted without delay so that the amendments to the law have a positive effect on construction as soon as possible.
One of the adopted amendments to the Construction Law - the silence as acceptance or default principle - is aimed at avoiding administrative obstacles during the approval of a construction project. The amendments indicate that if the construction board does not make a decision on the construction project within the specified term, it is considered that a decision favourable to the applicant has been made. Thus, it is planned to prevent situations in which the approval of the construction project is delayed indefinitely, unreasonably delaying the construction process. The adopted law stipulates that the Cabinet of Ministers has yet to develop regulations on in which cases this principle can be applied.
"In the near future, in cooperation with the representatives of the industry and the institutions involved in the supervision of the construction process, work will be started on the development of a regulatory framework for meaningful implementation of the "silence as acceptance" principle in the construction process," confirmed Olga Feldmane, Director of the Construction Policy Department, Ministry of Economics.
The adopted amendments to the law related to the process of contesting a building permit are also significant. In the future, if the building permit issued to the construction initiator is contested, it does not automatically suspend the construction process - the court must decide on its suspension separately. These amendments address cases where unfounded complaints and litigation freeze a construction project, even for several years while litigation is in progress.
With these and other adopted amendments, it is planned to eliminate shortcomings in the construction process in Latvia, which negatively affect the quality of construction, create administrative barriers and significantly hinder the construction process in order to make the country's real estate environment more attractive to investors in the long run. “The adopted amendments to the Construction Law reflect the understanding between legislators and real estate developers and builders from the industry's point of view. We highly appreciate the adopted amendments, as they will allow avoiding various unfavourable and often unjustified problem situations, which in general have made the Latvian real estate environment more unpredictable and unattractive for various investment projects,” says Mārtiņš Vanags, Chairman of the Board of the Alliance of Real Estate Developers.
Amendments to the Construction Law now also regulate the responsibility of each participant in the construction process for a specific stage - a scope of responsibility has been determined, and each participant will be responsible for its own part of the construction process. The law has also been supplemented with professional duties of a construction specialist, as well as a number of other changes have been made to the law, which clarify the definitions of regulatory concepts, along with the competence of the local government construction board and other controlling institutions.