"Windmill affair". All the energy price frost bill will block the construction of fresh homes

Under the pretext of freezing energy prices, a fresh government coalition, like the PiS, introduces controversial amendments to the bill. It turns out that this fresh regulation can block the anticipation of building fresh homes.

The Energy Price frost Act rapidly gained the nickname of the Windmill Act due to many controversial provisions. 1 of them is to recognise the construction of RES and related investments as public objectives, which opens the door to "the anticipation of expropriation of private individuals in order to build, for example, a wind farm". In addition, the fresh regulations let the construction of wind farms much closer to residential buildings, even 300 metres from homes.

According to the information provided by ‘Rzeczpospolita’, the Act on the freezing of energy prices has further consequences, namely the blocking of the anticipation of building fresh houses from 2026 to 27.

It appears that the application of the provisions in the current wording will prevent a decision on the building conditions from being reached after 1 January 2026 until the end of 2027. During this period, fresh homes will only be able to be built in areas covered by the local zoning plan and not on the basis of individual decisions.

This phenomenon is due to the extension of current studies of local conditions and spatial planning of municipalities until the end of 2027. lawyer Piotr Jarzyński of the Law Office of Jarzyński & Partners points out that it is essential to adjust the date in Article 59(3) of the July amendment of the Spatial Planning and Planning Act from “1 January 2026” to “1 January 2028”. According to that provision, it is possible to issue a ‘bond’ on application submitted after 1 January 2026 if a general plan is in force in the municipality concerned.

The absence of a change to this date will consequence in stagnation in the issuance of a decision on the building conditions in municipalities where the general plan does not apply until the end of 2025. In practice, this means that local governments will not be able to consider fresh requests for building conditions from 1 January 2026 and will be obliged to find the fresh building only on the basis of existing local or integrated investment plans. The lawyer points out that presently many investment processes in real property construction are based mainly on building conditions decisions.

Patryk Kozierkiewicz from the Polish Association of Developers Companies says that ignoring the change in Article 59(3) of the amendment will besides halt the investment of developers. Many of them are presently implementing projects on the basis of a decision on building conditions.

In the absence of a change in Article 59(3) of the amendment, it will be crucial to submit a request for building conditions by 31 December 2025. Only then will it be possible to get a "boot" in areas not covered by the local plan. However, only about 1 3rd of the country is covered by land usage plans.

The bill is presently awaiting the first reading in the Sejm.