City of Prague taking steps to shorten permits process

The Association of Developers of the Czech Republic has welcomed a commitment by the City of Prague to work towards the goal of reducing the time it takes to secure planning permits, but warns the problem may be more complex than city officials realize. The city has said that it would measure the length of the construction permit process with the goal of reducing the time needed. This is commonly believed to be seven years. "Monitoring the efficiency of construction offices who don't have enough civil servants to process the request, the technical assisantce including methodological unity or the technological level of the offices which often got stuck around the year 2000," says Tomáš Kadeřábek, director of the Association of Developers. Nevertheless, Kadeřábek said the association welcomed the effort by the city but warned that construction offices themselves are not solely to blame. He added that construction offices are woefully understaffed and that their computer equipment was often too out of date to read the files sent to them by developers.