The City Council, the District State Administration, and the Dipromisto Design Institute will be held accountable in court for concealing the General Plan of the city of Shchors

The Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights filed a lawsuit against the Shchors City Council, Shchors District State Administration, and the Ukrainian State Research Institute of Urban Planning “Dipromisto” with the Desnyanskyi District Court of Chernihiv. In its lawsuit, the public organization demands that the failure to provide the materials of the General Plan of Shchors for review be declared illegal. The activists ask the court to oblige the aforementioned institutions to provide them with a copy of the General Plan materials and to post the document on the website of the Shchors City Council, as required by law.

The refusal of all three institutions to provide the urban planning document for review forced Chernihiv human rights activists to go to court.

The city council, in response to a public organization’s information request, reported that the city’s General Plan is in the district state administration and even refuses to provide it to the city council itself. The refusal is explained by the stamp “For official use” on the document.

The district state administration also refused to provide the General Plan to activists. They also referred to the stamp “For official use”. District officials said that only the design institute “Dipromisto”, which developed the General Plan and gave it the stamp “DSK”, can decide on the issue of removing the stamp.

The design institute “Dipromisto”, when asked to provide a copy of the urban planning document, also gave a negative answer. The designers refused to remove the stamp from the General Plan, explaining this by the fact that they developed the General Plan on cartographic materials with the stamp “DSK” and they can no longer remove it.

“Getting access to the General Plan of the city is like walking in a vicious circle… No one wants to take responsibility for implementing the law. State institutions only refer to each other. In order to exercise our own right to access public information, we filed a lawsuit immediately against the city council, the Regional State Administration and “Dipromist”. If these organizations and institutions cannot decide among themselves who is responsible for publishing the General Plan, then let the court decide”,

– Viktor Tarasov, executive director of the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, talks about the organization’s position.

“Important in ensuring access to an urban planning document is the concept of “information manager”. As defined by the Law “On Access to Public Information”, the manager of the general plan is the organization that physically owns the document. The original copy of the master plan should be in the possession of both the city council, which orders it, pays for its production, and approves it, and the design institute, which develops it. Master plans of small cities that do not have departments of architecture and urban planning or secret departments are stored in district state administrations. As a rule, none of these administrators wants to take responsibility for ensuring the accessibility of master plans and shifts responsibility to other organizations. The lawsuit filed by our colleagues is an absolutely logical and correct step. Someone must put an end to this irresponsibility,” explains Volodymyr Shcherbachenko, an expert at the organization that deals with the problem of citizens’ access to urban planning documentation.