The question "Do you support #5655?" in the professional community, it actually became as defining as the question "Whose Crimea?".
The authors and supporters of the document call it the locomotive of the reform of the construction industry and emphasize its strong point - the idea of digitizing the permit system in urban planning.
"Global digitalization of the construction sector, transparency and accountability of all processes, which are provided for by draft law No. 5655 on urban planning reform, will help rebuild the country as soon as possible and at the same time rid this process of corruption risks," Olena Shulyak, the author of the draft law and a people's deputy, is confident.
Critics of the initiative, on the contrary, claim that No. 5655 will open the opportunity for developers to build cities and new territories with soulless and cheap "anthills" without control and with impunity. "This is a cartel conspiracy of a large construction business in connection with the Ministry of Regions," says Anna Kyriy, architect, deputy head of the Architectural Chamber of NSAU.
HONEST movement conducted the analysis passing No. 5655, after which he discovered an interesting pattern: "The bill is opposed by well-known anti-corruption public organizations, state institutions, and local self-government. While the support of the draft law was expressed mainly by persons involved in corruption investigations, unknown non-specialist public organizations, members of parties banned in Ukraine."
Portal "Lviv. Urban planning" posted open letter of Lyubomyr Zubach - Lviv city planning deputy mayor, People's Deputy of Ukraine of the 8th convocation.
Zubach writes: "To build. Hard, fast, uncontrolled - this is the goal of this urban planning pseudo-reform. Why pseudo? Because this is not a reform. This document is an open lobbying of large developers. Collapse of decentralization, restriction of the rights of local self-government, random people everywhere - in the newly created urban planning chamber, among authorized persons from urban planning control, notaries issuing permits and registering everything for a certain fee according to the agreement with the developer.
And as a cherry on the cake - private TOVs as control bodies. Developers are given the right to create their own firms, which will supposedly monitor buildings and detect violations of the requirements of urban planning legislation. This kind of all inclusive - I build and control myself. In order to understand who benefits from it, you need to see who supports all this. The Association of Cities of Ukraine and the National Union of Architects of Ukraine are categorically against! But all associations of builders are in common chorus "for".
Oleksiy Shemotyuk, the architect, head of the Kyiv branch of the Chamber of Architecture and a soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, described his vision of draft law No. 5655 and its likely impact on post-war reconstruction in a column on Censor.NET: "What the head of the presidential party Olena Shulyak is going to do under the dome of the Parliament is the legalization of looting in the process of reconstruction. And the citizens, who are busy fighting at the front and surviving in the blackout rear, have neither the ability nor the right to publicly protest against such actions of the authorities. Therefore, society will learn about the results of the adoption of draft law No. 5655 after the fact, when developers from the Monaco battalion and their partners build unlivable square meters with funds from international donors."
Even in the presidential faction of the parliament, there is no unequivocal support. People's deputy, architect Hanna Bondar withdrew her signature on the bill. She has her position motivated like this: "From my point of view, the two fundamental risks are the emergence of private controllers and the narrowing of the role of local self-government bodies in matters of urban planning control. <...> You will say that the local authorities are not coping. Yes, I must admit - it doesn't work. It is necessary to establish responsibility and give the right to be responsible for security in the city to local self-government bodies. The model proposed by the draft law is different.
In short, the role of the state is strengthened and construction companies are given more opportunities. The rights of architects, designers, local residents, local self-government bodies, cultural heritage protection bodies are abolished. I cannot support such a model. It is not possible to destroy institutions on the grounds that they do not work well. Institutions must be strengthened and fuses must be installed. This is a guarantee of democracy."
No. 5655 is legally imperfect. Remarks from the Main Legal Department of the BP apparatus occupy 23 pages. In general, by December 1, the list of amendments included about 2 items. The volume of materials with which the deputies had to familiarize themselves before supporting or rejecting the new law is terribly large. But formally, only an official letter signed by the deputy chairman of the NAKC, Andrii Vishnevskyi, became the reason to postpone the vote.
The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption noted that draft law No. 5655 does not correspond to the Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2021-2025, and suggested that people's deputies make changes to the document and provided relevant comments and recommendations. The main claim of the NAKC: "There are no consequences for illegal construction in the event of detection of violations as a result of state urban planning supervision. This significantly increases corruption risks, and also promotes the spread of corrupt practices and illegal constructions."
The author of the draft law, Olena Shulyak, reacted to the situation as follows: "I hasten to reassure those who paid attention to the manipulations of the opponents that NAZK is against the reform. It does not. The Agency proposes to finalize the document in the context of the articles of urban planning documentation, but this does not conceptually affect the main meanings and essence of the reform. <...> We continue to closely cooperate with the NAKC and receive proposals from them. This is logical and correct, because this is how adequate work on the draft law takes place. Once again: NAKC supports the main points of the reform, and we quickly take into account all their technical comments."
Is it correct to consider the issue of the developer's lack of responsibility for self-construction as a "technical defect", or is it a conceptual component of the draft law? How long does it take authors to fill this gap? PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA continues to monitor the development of the topic.
Main photo: Serhii Nuzhnenko / Radio Svoboda
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No. 5655: a bone of contention between architects and legislators. Part 1