Challenging the zoning plan in Poland
On June 1st, 2017 the amendment to Polish Administrative Procedure Code entered into force. New regulations abolish the obligation to call an authority to remove the infringement of law before filling complain to appropriate administrative court on annulment the zoning plan. It means that official notice addressed to authority before undertaking court action is no longer mandatory. In such state of affairs proceedings concerning challenging zoning plan have been significantly shortened.
Call for removing infringement of law
Before June 1st 2017 in Poland, party interested in challenging the zoning plan was obliged to send to authority official notice, which contained call for removing infringement of law. Such call was addressed to authority, which issued challenged zoning plan, which in practice was a City Council. The notice shall be duly justified and indicate the negative consequences for challenging party which were caused by establishing zoning plan. Basically, it is a matter of proving that the provisions of adopted zoning plan make impossible or significantly hinder the execution of claimant’s rights granted by provisions of law. Previously, the authority was obliged to answer for such call. Negative answer was a premise for filling complain to administrative court. Currently, since June 1st, 2017 the authority is not obliged to respond for the call. The party is entitled to filling complain to court without calling an authority for removing infringement of law.
Complain to administrative court
Under the provisions on local self-government act, any act of local law can be challenged at any time. The complaint is obliged to show and duly justify the infringement of law caused by adopting the zoning plan and also his legal interest. The complain must be lodged through an authority which issued challenged act. It also shall be noted that the court will dismiss the complain if the same complain has been already rejected by the court in the same case previously.
Effects of lodging a complain
If the court considers that the complain was justified, then it results in total annulment of zoning plan ex tunc. On the other hand, dismissal of complain opens the possibility for filling the last resort appeal to Supreme Administrative Court.
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