Amendments to the Act on Spatial Planning and Development – extension of the deadline for preparing general plans
The Act of 4 April 2025 on Amendments to the Act on Spatial Planning and Development (the “Act”) aims to address the difficulties associated with maintaining the deadlines for the introduction of a new planning instrument – the general plan – provided for by the Law of 7 July 2023 on Amendments to the Act on Spatial Planning and Development and Certain Other Laws (the “Amendment”). The Act amends the provisions of the Amendment by, among other things, extending the validity of municipalities’ existing studies of land use conditions and directions until 30 June 2026. With this change, local governments will have more time to complete procedures for drawing up general plans, without suspending the ability to adopt local zoning plans and issue zoning decisions.
New deadline for general plans
General plans are to replace the studies of land use conditions and directions used under the Act on Planning and Spatial Development of 27 March 2003 – with the difference that they will be acts of local law, rather than documents that are only internally binding only on municipal bodies when adopting local plans. According to the wording of the Amendment, municipalities are required to adopt general plans by 1 January 2026. The Act extends this deadline to 1 July 2026, which means an additional six months for existing studies of land use conditions and directions. The change gives local governments additional months to finalize the procedure for adopting a general plan, and investors more time to carry out investments under existing regulations.
Decisions on zoning conditions until 30 June 2026
A consequence of the postponement of the study will also be the possibility of issuing zoning condition decisions under the existing rules until 30 June 2026 – in case the municipality has not enacted a general plan to that date. However, the Act does not provide for extending the possibility of issuing zoning decisions for unlimited time until 1 July 2026, so there is no change in the fact that, with the adoption of the Act in its current form, only zoning decisions that become final by 1 January 2026 will be unlimited, while decisions that become final after 1 January 2026 will have a 5-year validity period.
Housing Act and clarification of procedure, i.e. other changes resulting from the Act
The term of the Act of 5 July 2018 on Facilitation of Preparation and Implementation of Housing Investments and Associated Investments, the so-called Housing Act, will also be extended – it will expire on 1 July 2026. Other changes provided for in the Act include: allowing the preparation of the first general plans, disregarding the provisions of outdated development strategies, supplementing transitional provisions allowing the completion of ongoing procedures for determining the location of housing projects carried out under the Housing Act, as well as restoring the legal basis, mistakenly removed from the Act on Spatial Planning and Development in the Amendment, for agreeing on a draft local plan with a special purpose vehicle dedicated to the Central Transport Port (Centralny Port Komunikacyjny).
By the end of January 2025, about 75% of municipalities had begun drafting a general plan. The new form of spatial planning forces a broader scope of work and its more “experimental” nature, hence the extension of the deadline under the Act is likely to have a positive impact on the quality of local law and prevent the investment paralysis that would occur in municipalities that, as of 1 January 2026 – according to the Amendment – would not have time to implement the general plan, preventing the issuance of zoning decisions until after its introduction.
On 9 April 2025 the Senate passed the Act without amendments – the President of the Republic of Poland should sign the Act and order its publication in the Journal of Laws within 21 days of its presentation to him by the Speaker of the Parliament.
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