Owners of illegal buildings will have to sign a declaration that they guarantee the safety of the building and bear responsibility for damage to other people if the building is built less than a meter from the neighboring plot, they will have to have the permission of the neighbors for legalization, illegal builders will not receive additional discounts, and illegal buildings that are built after the ortho-photo recording from 2018 will not have the possibility to be legalized in accordance with more favorable conditions.
This was stated, among other things, in the answers of the Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism to the remarks of the participants of the public debate on the draft law on the legalization of illegal buildings.
At the recently held public debate on the text of the draft, 333 objections were received, and the most was a request to change the article that defines that the legalization applies only to illegal objects that are on that video from 2018.
"We are of the opinion that the ortho-photograph should remain a cross-section of the state of the area because it was taken when the legalization procedure was started, i.e. at the time the Law on Planning and Construction of Buildings came into force, and that it should be a decisive response of the state that it will not tolerate future illegal construction. Any other decision would be a signal that it is possible to continue to build illegally", said the Ministry to "Vijesta".
In the individual responses to this request, it was answered that the law at the time clearly announced that the legalization would only apply to those buildings that are on the video, and that a media campaign was organized about it, as well as that those builders worked at their own risk and damage.
It was left to consider the request for their legalization, but with payment of the full amount of fees for urban rehabilitation and utilities.
Of the other objections, it was not accepted to extend the period of six months from the date of entry into force of the law, in which the owners of these buildings should start the registration process in the cadastral records, if they are not already registered. But an amendment will be made that the procedure can be temporarily suspended if there are legal problems, unresolved property relations... until they are resolved. For buildings that are not registered in the cadastre, a demolition decision will be made.
The abolition of the provision that legalization requires the consent of a neighbor if a building of up to 200 square meters is built less than one meter away from its cadastral plot or if a building of 200 to 500 square meters is built at a distance of less than two meters is not accepted either.
In the comments, it was stated that this norm could cause blackmail from the neighbors, while the Ministry said that if this happens, legal proceedings can be initiated.
Several participants in the public hearing, who were listed as civil engineers or architects, stated that a distance of two meters between buildings of 500 square meters is small, especially in areas of high seismic risk.
Nor was the objection to cancel the norm - an exception according to which the owner of a residential building up to 200 square meters can submit a certified statement that he is responsible for damage caused to third parties caused by the use of the building. The Ministry said that they introduced this norm in order to reduce the costs of the overall legalization procedure. This is an exception to the norm that legalization requires an analysis by a company authorized to produce technical documentation, which examined the static and seismic stability of the illegal object, confirming that it is safe for use.
Several citizens asked for the legalization to be approved even without this analysis and statement of the owner, while several engineers proposed that the mandatory analysis of the stability of the building and the quality of construction be retained for buildings that are less than 200 square meters in the coastal region that has the highest degree of seismological risk. that is, the possibility of a devastating earthquake.
A number of technical comments related to the deadlines for providing certain documentation, specifying the competences and titles of inspectors and other persons who will be involved in the process of legalization and its control, as well as the competences and job descriptions of the future agency that will lead this work and of local governments, have been accepted. .
There were also proposals to reduce or abolish fees for certain categories of facilities or population. The Ministry is of the general opinion that discounts of up to 80 percent are sufficient for vulnerable groups, and care must be taken to ensure that those who violated the law are not privileged over those who built legally and paid full fees in the past years.
The Union of Municipalities, as well as municipal institutions and companies, had most of these objections.
It remains to define more precisely the role of water and electricity companies in connection with the disconnection of facilities from the network if legalization is not accepted, as well as the conditions of possible legalization in protected areas where construction is possible under special conditions.
Payment of fees for legal and illegal will be equalized
Igor Damjanović, a participant in the public discussion, stated that this draft law has an asymmetry in relation to the norms of the draft law on planning of buildings and that it opens up space for discrimination in the amount of fees.
"Illegal builders should also reduce the amount for the basic housing facility to 50 percent, just like legal builders. On the other hand, legal builders should be allowed a reduction of 80 percent for socially vulnerable categories - as it was made possible for illegal builders", stated Damjanović.
The Ministry replied that "the objection is accepted".
Damjanović also said that the repayment term also puts him in an unequal position because it gives illegal builders the option of paying off fees for 30 years.
"On the other hand, to legal builders, the Building Planning Act gives a maximum of 10 years of repayment period. The repayment term should be equalized to 30 years for basic housing facilities, and up to 15 years for other facilities," said Damjanović.
And these remarks were answered with "accepted".
This means that the conditions for paying legalization fees for basic housing facilities will be equalized with those of legal builders under the Planning Act. Both laws are simultaneously under public discussion.
Gave up PGR, but paid 400 thousand euros
The Ministry of Spatial Planning previously announced that the General Regulation Plan of Montenegro (GRP) would not be developed, then they did not specify if and how the money spent by the expert team for the preparation of the GRP would be returned to the state.
In July 2020, the previous ministry signed a contract on the development of the PGR with the head of the expert team, Ksenija Vukmanović.
"According to the aforementioned contract, the total price for the service of creating the PGR was 2.000.000 euros, with the total associated taxes, surcharges, etc. In the contract, the Ministry undertook to pay the manager and members of the expert team in the manner referred to in Article 2 of the contract, i.e. 20% of the amount after submitting the analysis of the documentation and the existing situation. In accordance with the agreed obligation, the design manager and the expert team completed the first phase of the plan development and submitted an analysis of the documentation and the existing situation, thus obtaining the condition for the payment of 20% of the agreed amount. Since the amount of 20% of the contracted amount was paid to the construction manager and the expert team only in relation to the performed service of the first stage of the PGR preparation, the conditions for the return of these funds were not met", the Ministry stated.
The percentage of 20 percent on two million amounts to 400 thousand euros.
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