Opinion|Reader’s opinion
The users of the law have not had the opportunity for genuine dialogue with the drafters of the law.
Construction Act is under consideration by the environment committee of the parliament. Due to the shortcomings of the preparation process, the users of the law have not had the opportunity for a genuine dialogue with the drafters of the law.
The extremely incomplete opinion summary has also not conveyed the correct information about the criticism of the draft law, neither to the citizens nor to the political decision-makers.
Land Use and Construction Act sharing between the preparation process without a proper impact assessment is leading to an unclear situation at the interface between land use and construction. However, the most worrying thing is that in its presented form, the proposed law will produce a law directing the design, construction, use and maintenance of a building stock that is less sustainable than the current law. The draft law makes it easier than before to demolish buildings and makes repairing buildings more expensive and risky. It also requires conflicting requirements for the qualifications of designers and foremen. In addition, the permit process itself with permit thresholds is unclear.
Many of these problems have already been brought up in the statements made during the preparation of the Zoning and Construction Act. However, the same errors are still in the legal text. There has not been enough time to carefully write the whole, which was divided into two separate laws less than a year ago. Many mistakes would have been screened out in the interaction with the industry.
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Many errors have already been pointed out before.
The draft law with it, the division into operating permits and building permits with their different document requirements will also be removed. The draft law defines ten items of documents as documents to be attached to the building permit application, but does not specify what kind of buildings or construction sites each document must be delivered to. The current Land Use and Building Act gives discretion over the necessary documents to the building control authority. This mention is missing from the draft construction law.
The change in the law requires almost twenty new regulations or changes to the current regulation. In many municipalities, the permit process itself is electronic and the information flows into the municipality’s systems in machine language. The reformed law requires changes to these digital permit systems. Users of the systems are all license applicants, in addition to the officials involved in the processing of the license. We still don’t know how the systems should be changed. The year 2023 is a short time to adjust settings, change systems and learn new ways of working. Inevitably, examples such as Apotti and Helsingin Sarastia come to mind.
Countless with its errors and contradictions, the draft law only provides a basis for a discussion with the industry and restarting the preparation of the law based on the draft.
Passing the law as presented threatens to cause delays in projects, a lot of interpretation disagreements and an avalanche of complaints flowing into administrative rights.
Ifa Kytösaho
architect SAFA
responsible licensed architect, City of Vantaa
The reader’s opinions are speeches written by HS readers, which are selected and delivered by the HS editors. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of writing at the address www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.
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