The Prosecutor’s Office finds no one to blame for the unavailability of general plans for cities in Chernihiv region

The reaction of the prosecutor’s office to the concealment of the general plans of the cities of Chernihiv region from citizens can now be found on the website www.cityplan.in.ua. The web resource contains the responses of the prosecutor’s offices to complaints from public organizations regarding the restriction of citizens’ access to urban planning documentation of the cities of Ukraine. This information was collected during the all-Ukrainian monitoring of the accessibility of the general plans of cities.

The general plan is the most important document that reflects the process of development, planning, construction and other use of the territory of a settlement. This document describes both the current state of development of the city and the plan for the coming years.

We remind you that monitoring the accessibility of general plans for citizens began in the summer of this year. The first step in the public research was to send information requests to city councils with a request to inform about the ways for citizens to familiarize themselves with the main urban planning document and to provide the document itself for review.

However, in response, the public activists received a refusal from the absolute majority of city councils. In turn, human rights activists appealed the failure to provide access to public information to the prosecutor’s offices. However, the prosecutor’s offices do not see any grounds for reacting to the concealment of general plans, and instead suggest going to court.

Viktor Tarasov, executive director of the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, which monitors the accessibility of general plans of cities in the Chernihiv region, notes: “Almost no prosecutor’s office has provided a full response to the complaints we submitted. The content is almost the same everywhere – the general plan is marked “For official use” and there is no reason for a prosecutor’s response. The fact that a number of laws are being violated, in particular the Law of Ukraine “On Regulation of Urban Planning Activities” and “On Access to Public Information” – the prosecutor’s office does not seem to care.”

An interesting exception to this series is the reaction of the Nizhyn Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office, to which a complaint was sent about the unlawful refusal to provide information regarding urban planning documentation of the city of Nizhyn and with a demand to hold the mayor of Nizhyn, M.V. Prykhodko (it was under his signature that the response from the Nizhyn City Council was received) administratively liable for failure to comply with the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public Information”. The Nizhyn Prosecutor’s Office was almost the only one to adequately respond to the complaint about the refusal to satisfy the information request and reported the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against the head of the urban planning and architecture department, the chief architect of the city, Didenko G.M. By an interesting coincidence, a few days before this, this same official was detained for receiving a bribe of $2,000.

But at the same time, the Nizhyn prosecutor’s office, recognizing the fact of improper execution of the information request, indicated that it had no grounds to hold the mayor of Nizhyn, M.V. Prykhodko, accountable, because “the response to the information request was not signed by him, but by another person” (!!!). In other words, the prosecutor’s office does not see any violations in the fact that other unknown persons are signing for the mayor in official documents. Although, against the background of the recent corruption scandals in Nizhyn, this fact does not seem so blatant.

More information about the availability of general plans of cities in Chernihiv region can be found on the website