Location conditions is one of the crucial documents obtained prior to obtaining construction permits and conducting construction projects in line with the Serbian Law on Spatial Planning and Construction („Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia“ no. 72/2009, 81/2009 – correction, 64/2010 – the decision of the Constitutional Court, 24/2011, 121/2012, 42/2013 – the decision of the Constitutional Court, 50/2013 – the decision of the Constitutional Court, 98/2013 – the decision of the Constitutional Court, 132/2014, 145/2014, 83/2018, 31/2019, 37/2019 – other law and 9/2020). This document is giving crucial information on the technical requirements that must be fulfilled for obtaining the construction permit and, therefore, the legal framework regulating the matters related to location conditions should always be well observed by all participants in the construction projects in Serbia.
The new Regulation on Location Conditions also observes other platforms and communication technologies used between the administrative public bodies in line with the Law on Electronic Government and accompanying bylaws.
The issuance of the location conditions is in the competence of the local authority competent for the issuance of the construction permit. However, the main role of the local authority is collecting the information from the holders of public authority which are, in most cases, separated from the local authority. In some cases, the issue of the competence of the particular public authority holder is becoming a problem, whereby, the location conditions cannot be issued since each particular public authority holder considers itself unauthorized for the issuance of the conditions within its field of authority. The new Regulation on Location Conditions introduces provisions on determining of the entities that are considered as having the status of holders of public authority authorized for issuance of conditions for designing and connecting (being one of the mandatory elements of location conditions), and forming of the register of public authorities holders with the Centralized Information System.
This solution should result in a higher level of transparency, and enable better control of implementation and conducting of activities through CIS by the holders of public authorities.
Even though the new Regulation on Location Conditions did not bring major substantial changes to the mandatory content of the location conditions, there is certain information that shall from now on be included in the location conditions, and that should be mentioned as rather useful. The main novelties in this regard are the introduction of (i) information whether environmental impact assessment procedure for planned facilities is required or not; and (ii) information on additional cadastral plots outside the plots involved needed for connecting to the infrastructure. This information shall improve the predictability of the costs of construction projects.
The new Regulation on Location Conditions also elaborates on the existing solutions prescribed under the Law on Spatial Planning and Construction, which are observed in more detail than in the previous Regulation on Location Conditions. For example, the new Regulation on Location Conditions explicitly regulates certain procedures such as conditions for rejection of the request for issuance of the location conditions, right to file a complaint and procedure thereof, modifications of the location conditions, etc.