Due to the bad Law on Planning and Spatial Planning, which completely centralized spatial planning in Montenegro, residents of the local community "Lepetane" in Tivat, as well as the local administration of that city, have huge problems because there is no valid Detailed Urban Plan for that settlement.
DUP Lepetane should cover an area of 20,24 hectares and include the territory of the northernmost part of Tivat Municipality. This planning document covers the area from the northernmost border of the Lepetane settlement towards the Verige Strait to Cape Opatovo in the south, excluding the area of the former barracks in Lepetane with an area of 4,69 hectares, for which a special urban project was drawn up and adopted in the Tivat Municipality Assembly several years ago. .
On two occasions, starting from 2019 until today, the Government of Montenegro made a decision to start the process of creating a new DUP of Lepetana, chose a processor and gave him a programming task. However, after that, the Government, twice without any explanation, made decisions on the termination of the validity of its earlier decisions on the drafting of a new DUP for Lepetane. The last time it was the government of the former prime minister Zdravka Krivokapića done on December 29 last year.
In practice, this means that the residents of Lepetan, as well as the local administration of Tivat, have their hands completely tied when it comes to the legal construction of any new facility in the area of that local community. Locals cannot build new houses and other facilities, and the local government cannot start the construction of any new public or infrastructure facilities, although they are badly needed in that settlement where almost nothing significant has been invested for decades.
By the way, in the Program Task that the Government has given to the developers of the new DUP twice for that Tivat settlement, before, for reasons that have never been officially announced, the Government made a decision to abandon the development of a new basic planning document for Lepetane , it was stated that the main goal of creating the new DUP is "ensuring better valorization of space".
That the hands of the locals, as well as the Municipality of Tivat, are tied because of all this, a couple of days ago at the public debate on the draft of the Vrmac Hill Protection Study, which should cover the protected area of the future Nature Park and the entire area of the Lepetana Municipality, was also confirmed by the Secretary for Spatial Planning, Milica Manojlovic. She pointed out that the Government's attitude towards the issue of drafting a new DUP for Lepetane is extremely problematic for the local community, and that this kind of (in)action by the state, which has usurped all the responsibilities regarding spatial planning, actually encourages wild construction, the consequences of which will later be expensive and difficult to eliminate.
"According to the development needs, it is necessary to create planning preconditions for the urban development of the Lepetane settlement, curb unplanned construction, improve the content of social standards and communal infrastructure", it was stated in the Program Task, noting that according to the higher-order plan, the Spatial-Urban Plan of the Municipality of Tivat, the main The uses of the areas in the DUP Lepetane are low-density housing, tourism, urban greenery, production and utility activities and infrastructure.
"Lepetani is recognized and thus should be developed as a local center in the function of tourism development. Today, it is a settlement of seasonal housing, and it should be developed as a tourist center, a local center of urban importance that functions throughout the year", it was written in the Program Task, noting that the urban development of Lepetan is affected by restrictions related to the zone of sanitary protection of the local source Plavda, which must also be respected in the new DUP.
However, due to the subsequent decisions of the official Podgorica to abandon the drafting of a new DUP, the locals have been completely disenfranchised for more than three years when it comes to the possibility of legally building on their properties. For that, the locals can thank their fellow citizens, deputies from Tivat in the former convocation of the Parliament of Montenegro Jovanka Laličić (DPS), who herself is a native of Lepetan, and to Adrian Vuksanović (HGI) who, with their two votes, decisively influenced the adoption of the controversial current Law on Planning and Spatial Planning in 2017. Without their two votes, it would not be possible to secure the necessary majority of 41 deputies in the Assembly for the adoption of this law, which completely deprives local administrations of the possibility to plan and control their own space, but it is centralized at the level of the Government.
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