At the meeting of the Strategic Management Committee of the Cabinet of Ministers chaired by the Prime Minister E. Silina today, January 16, conceptually supported the proposals prepared by the Ministry of Economy (ME) together with cooperation partners for reducing the administrative burden in the field of real estate development, which are primarily focused on the implementation of a unified and consistent process in which each subsequent stage is a logical continuation of the previous stage and includes measures to improve local-level territorial development planning, land use, construction process, cadastral surveying, environmental impact assessment and deforestation.

I am very pleased that the involvement of many partners - both from the state institutions and the private sector - has led to a comprehensive plan to make the real estate development process faster and simpler in all its stages. Entrepreneurs have long expressed that the slow real estate development process is a significant obstacle to Latvia's competitiveness and investment attraction, compared to our neighboring countries. Now it is essential to achieve the adoption of appropriate legislative amendments as soon as possible, so that the changes foreseen in the plan come into effect," emphasizes the Minister of Economy Viktors Valainis.

The working group reached an agreement that primarily to reduce the administrative burden in the field of real estate development, it is necessary to achieve more effective involvement of state institutions and owners of engineering systems (service providers) (in issuing conditions and technical regulations, harmonizing documents), as well as to improve the public participation process, review its scope and more clearly define its meaning in each of the stages.

The action plan for reducing the administrative burden in the field of real estate development includes 62 proposals in five areas:

19 measures are intended for the improvement of the territory planning process;
11 measures are planned to be implemented to solve environmental protection issues, which mainly affect the environmental impact assessment;
5 measures are planned to improve the preparation of the construction process - implementation of geodesy, other types of feasibility studies, deforestation;
16 measures are defined for the improvement of the construction process, from the initiation of construction to the commissioning of the building;
11 measures are planned in the field of construction registration and strengthening of property rights.
As can be seen, the construction process under the control of the Ministry of Finance is only one of the components of the real estate development process. To facilitate the construction process, the design of the construction plan and the execution of construction works, the Ministry of Finance plans to:

make significant improvements in the process of receiving technical and special regulations, incl. to review the issuers of the technical regulations corresponding to a specific plan, the content of the technical regulations, the "validity period" of the technical regulations, the connection with the territory planning process (local planning, detailed planning), as well as to improve the regulations for issuing special regulations;
revise the documentation of construction works, moving to structured data for recording construction works, which is carried out with modern technologies;
to introduce a unified process from the initiation of the construction plan to the registration of the building in the land register, ensuring the use of the data obtained during the construction process for the purposes of building registration, as well as renouncing the cadastral survey of the building before putting the building into operation;
to create a simple and understandable regulation for the reuse of building materials.
As you know, at the end of 2023, the Ministry of Economy received the task of the State Administration and Local Government Commission of the Saeima to develop solutions that would ease the administrative burden for entrepreneurs in the field of real estate development, as well as the task of the Prime Minister to prepare proposals for reducing the administrative burden in the field of real estate development, incl. in local level territory development planning, land development, construction, cadastral surveying, environmental impact assessment, deforestation.

Initially, proposals for process improvements were prepared by the Ministry of Economy in cooperation with the Council of Foreign Investors in Latvia, the Alliance of Real Estate Developers, the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Latvian Employers, representatives of construction workers, as well as involving other ministries and cooperation partners. The further discussions took place in the high-level working group led by the State Chancellery and in separate expert groups on territorial planning issues, environmental impact assessment issues, construction issues, as well as property rights issues.

Taking into account what was discussed at today's meeting of the Strategic Management Committee, the Ministry of Economy will improve the draft Action Plan for reducing the administrative burden in the field of real estate development and by this year. will be submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for consideration in March.

At the same time, we emphasize that the Ministry of Economy constantly evaluates the possibilities to reduce the administrative burden in construction, incl. also in 2023, several changes were made in the regulatory acts in this area. For example, with last year's amendments to the Building Construction Regulations, the procedure for extending the building permit has been simplified, 

as well as uniform requirements for construction works of the same type of buildings. Along with the amendments to the Law on Construction, the Institute of Engineering Consultants was introduced, the administrative burden on construction specialists was reduced and the coordination of construction plans was facilitated. Also, last year, amendments were approved to the regulations for the assessment of the competence of construction specialists and the supervision of independent practice, improving the conditions for professional development tests, thus significantly reducing the administrative burden for both construction specialists and clients, as well as competence testing institutions.

At the same time, the amendments approved by the government last year to the Apartment Ownership Law are important, facilitating decision-making in multi-apartment residential buildings, in order to promote more efficient management of multi-apartment residential buildings, facilitate the decision-making procedure and promote the energy efficiency of buildings. On the other hand, along with the amendments approved by the Saeima to the Law on the Management of Residential Houses, the requirements for managers to manage the house file in the Construction Information System have been eased.

Ministry of Economy

Department of Public Relations

presse@em.gov.lv