The court ordered to make the General Plan of Semenivka accessible to citizens

Despite the efforts of the Semenivka City Council, Chernihiv Oblast, to hide the General Plan, the Desnyanskyi District Court of Chernihiv ordered the document to be made available to citizens.

This is stated in the court.

The Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights filed a lawsuit against the local government body. The reason for the court appeal was the city council’s refusal to provide the city’s General Plan for review. Human rights activists did not agree with this response and demanded that the document be provided through the court. Another demand of the activists was to make the General Plan accessible to all citizens.

The court recognized the refusal of the local government body to provide a copy of the General Plan as “unlawful.” The judicial body also obliged the city council to provide representatives of the public organization with the text and graphic parts of the document. In addition, officials are obliged to fulfill the requirements of the law and place the General Plan on the official website of the city council and in the publicly accessible premises of the local government body.

“By all means and not by means of lies” the city council tried to hide the General Plan. Representatives of the local government body did not appear at the court hearings, did not provide the necessary materials to the court, and generally demonstratively ignored the trial. But now there is a court decision and it will be logical to hold officials liable for the confidentiality of public information provided for by law. We have already prepared a letter to the prosecutor’s office,” notes Viktor Tarasov, head of the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights.

“The court’s decision to provide access to the General Plan of Semenivka is undoubtedly pleasing. Unfortunately, in general, we observe a practice where courts recognize the illegality of restricting access to general plans only for small cities. In large and resort cities, where concealing general plans generates fat corruption dividends, the courts side with city councils and justify the secrecy of access to these urban planning documents. We are currently working to change this practice,” comments the adopted court decision, the head of the East Ukrainian Center for Public Initiatives, Volodymyr Shcherbachenko, a partner organization fighting for the accessibility of general plans for Ukrainian cities.

You can read the responses of the city council regarding the accessibility of the General Plan of the city of Semenivka, Chernihiv region.

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The described activity is carried out


jointly with the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights within the framework of


with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and is supported by the initiative “Open Government: Testing Tools for Influencing the Government”.