Legal Highlights for Real Estate – November 2022
November 2022
- On 1 Draft Act on Amendments to the Act on Spatial Planning and Development revised after public consultation
- Maximum price for electricity for entrepreneurs
On 1 Draft Act on Amendments to the Act on Spatial Planning and Development revised after public consultation
On 16 September 2022, the public consultation stage of the Draft Act on Amendments to the Act on Spatial Planning and Development ended. According to the consultation report of 19 September 2022 published by the Government Legislation Center (pl: Rządowe Centrum Legislacyjne „RCL„), as many as 1,281 comments were submitted to the draft published in April, of which more than a dozen were incorporated into the revised draft act, which was released on the RCL website on 21 October 2022. The most significant changes to the draft are the abandonment of the proposed method of calculating and collecting the planning fee, and the abandonment of the issuance of zoning decisions for a specified period.
The Ministry of Development and Technology (pl: Ministerstwo Rozwoju i Technologii „MRiT„) proposed in the April draft that a fee for the increase in the value of a property resulting from a change in the planning designation of that property would be due immediately upon enactment of a local plan or an amendment thereto. Such a fee was to amount to 30% of the increase in property value in all cases. As a result of amendments to the draft made after consultations, the rules for calculating the fee remain unchanged, i.e., as before, the fee becomes due only if the property is sold within 5 years of the change in planning designation.
The April draft also stipulated limiting the term of the zoning decision to 5 years from the date the decision became final. The MRiT justified this proposal with the fact that there are currently zoning decisions issued several or even more than a dozen years back in circulation, and in the meantime the neighborhood of the property for which such a decision was issued may have changed significantly. Execution of the decision a long time after its issuance may therefore cause spatial chaos. The Ministry, however, backed away from this assumption. During the consultations, developers pointed out that 5 years is sometimes an insufficient period of time to carry out the design process of a development and obtain all the necessary permits for its implementation.
One of the most important changes that remained unchanged in the draft amendment is the introduction of general plans, i.e. a spatial planning instrument to definitively replace the study of land use conditions and directions. A general plan, unlike a study, is to be a universally binding and obligatory act to be introduced by all municipalities. According to the draft, municipalities will have about three years to adopt a general plan. This is because the MRiT assumes that these documents will already have to be in every municipality from the beginning of 2026.
The amendment is expected to take effect in the first quarter of 2023.
Maximum price for electricity for entrepreneurs
In the beginning of November this year, the Act of 27 October 2022 on extraordinary measures aimed at reducing the level of electricity prices and supporting certain consumers in 2023 („Act„) entered into force, introducing a maximum price mechanism for electricity, which will be available i.a. for entrepreneurs. In principle, businesses can be categorized as entitled consumers by having the status of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs within the meaning of the Act of 6 March 2018. – Entrepreneurs’ Law.
Generally by the end of 2023, the maximum price for electricity will be 693 or 785 PLN/MWh (depending on a given category of entitled consumers). In most cases, the fundamental requirement for benefiting from the maximum price will be the submission of an appropriate declaration to the energy supplier (in writing or electronically) by 30 November 2022.
In the event of a reduction of standard energy consumption by entrepreneurs, the Act introduces certain opportunities for a discount of 10% of the total electricity bill of sale for 2023.
To find out more about the details of the Act and to analyse the possibility of applying a maximum price, we kindly encourage you to contact the experts of Baker Tilly Legal Poland.