Complaint About Inaction Regarding Failure to Adopt the Municipal General Plan

Abstract

This study, based on a formal-dogmatic approach and doctrinal interpretation of legal texts, aims to clarify doubts related to the 2023 reform of spatial planning and development in Poland, arising from the new legal institution introduced as part of this reform: the municipal general plan. Specifically, the text analyses the admissibility of judicial review of these spatial planning acts, and in particular the possibility of effectively initiating proceedings before an administrative court in a case arising from a complaint concerning the inaction of a municipal body in failing to adopt a municipal general plan, as well as the admissibility of a public-law claim concerning the municipality’s inclusion of optional elements in the general plan, particularly the development supplementation area, which is crucial to the issuance of decisions on development conditions. This analysis is expectation that these issues will soon arise in the adjudicatory practice of administrative courts. Therefore, it is worth considering now the issue of judicial review of municipal general plans, which must be adopted in each municipality by 30 June 2026.