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Provisional Building Objects – the Need to Change the Law

In the recent years, the number of provisional building objects (e.g. street kiosks, pavilions, or container objects) has increased. According to the current regulations, there are two categories of provisional building objects – objects for temporary use and objects which are not permanently connected to the ground. “Erroneous qualification of an object can result in the wrong choice of proceedings for construction work,” warn legal advisor Artur Sidor and Anna Matysiak in their article for Builder magazine.

As a rule, the only requirement when constructing a provisional building object is to notify the appropriate body. There are, however, exceptions which require obtaining a building permit. This can be the case when construction work interferes with the local spatial development plan.

The notification on the construction of a provisional building object should only be accompanied by drafts, which do not provide a full presentation of the end result. Improper construction of an object can lead to numerous defects and, in a longer perspective, building accident. In such a situation, the liability for such events remains unclear.

The current regulations on provisional building objects raise various concerns, not only with respect to technical requirements, but also legal obligations imposed on those who construct such objects. “Insufficient requirements as to the methods of constructing provisional building objects were the cause of many emergencies, including building accidents. What is more, the question of liability for those events is not unambiguously determined in law,” the authors write in their article.

According to the authors, “it is important to amend the current regulations, mainly with respect to the size of provisional building objects but also the potential outcomes of building accidents involving provisional objects.”