New development rules in Poznań from 2025

End of the study and entry of general plans

The Poznań City Hall must pass a general plan by the end of 2025, which turns the previous order upside down. The existing study of conditions will be scrapped, and without a new plan after January 1, 2026, you will not receive development conditions for most plots in the city. Currently, in Poznań, we have 493 active local plans covering about 51.4% of the city's area. The rest of the terrain relies on WZ (Development Condition) decisions, which will now be much harder to obtain. We verified that the average processing time for a WZ application in 2024 in Poznań was 184 days, but in the new system this time may extend by another 60 days due to new social consultations.

Casacombug Urban Lobby is currently monitoring 37 ongoing cases that may reach a deadlock if not closed before December. The paperwork must be correct now, and not 'somehow sorted out' next year. The new general plan will divide Poznań into planning zones, and if your plot in Jeżyce or Wilda ends up in the wrong zone, you will lose the possibility of building blocks in favor of low-rise service buildings. This is a real threat to the profitability of projects bought for millions of zlotys. We analyze every plot against the new zones so our clients know if it's worth submitting a building permit application at all.

Heads-up: officials in Poznań rarely answer phones after 2:30 PM on Fridays, so all urgent applications and project corrections are always sent in the morning so they reach the desk before the weekend. We know these procedures and we know that the lack of one signature on a geodetic map can set a case back by 3 weeks. In 2024, we saved 12 investments this way that had errors in plot boundaries. No unnecessary moves, we straighten out such themes before they enter official circulation, which saves developers an average of 24 business days at every stage.

Without a general plan after January 1, 2026, you will not obtain development conditions on most plots in Poznań.

Integrated Investment Plan – a new chance in Jeżyce

The Integrated Investment Plan (ZPI) is a new tool that replaces the 'lex developer' resolution. It allows for negotiations with the city in the form of an urban planning agreement. Casacombug Urban Lobby participated in 4 preliminary consultations regarding ZPI for areas in Górczyn and Grunwald in the last quarter. The City of Poznań wants concrete facts on the table: if you want to build an estate of 420 apartments, you must fund, for example, the renovation of 280 meters of public road or build a kindergarten for 44 children. This is hard trading, where every zloty spent on infrastructure must be balanced by additional PUM (usable residential area).

In 2024, we saw 15 projects fail at the urban planning commission stage because developers counted on old connections and did not prepare a reliable site capacity analysis. ZPI requires the investor to prepare a local plan draft at their own expense, which costs on average from 47,000 to 93,000 PLN for the planning documentation alone. The paperwork must be correct with the new urban standards, which mandate a minimum 24.5% biologically active area for new multi-family estates. We know how to conduct these negotiations so that the city gets what it wants and the developer maintains a margin of at least 18.3%.

Time is key during urban planning agreement negotiations. Casacombug Urban Lobby conducted an analysis showing that the average time from submitting a ZPI application to the passing of a resolution by the Poznań City Council will be about 9 months. This is still faster than standard MPZP enactment, which in Poznań takes an average of 31 months. Concrete facts on the table: we help calculate if the accompanying infrastructure costs won't 'eat up' the profit from the investment. Often it is better to give the city 350 square meters for a local library than to fight for every two meters of an apartment and lose the vote at the council session.

ZPI is hard trading: you give the city a road or a kindergarten in exchange for a faster construction start and more PUM.

Parking standards and water retention in 2025

New regulations in Poznań place huge emphasis on ecology and parking, which directly hits the costs of building underground garages. From 2025, parking standards for new investments in Wilda and Łazarz will be tightened. The city requires an average of 1.1 spaces per apartment, but for investments over 50 units, you must also provide at least 18 bicycle spaces in a separate room. We calculated that building one space in a parking hall in Poznań currently costs an average of 84,200 PLN. Every project error that forces you to add 3 spaces is a loss of over a quarter of a million PLN from the budget.

Water retention is another topic where the paperwork must be correct to the liter. Aquanet has tightened the conditions for issuing sewage and rainwater collection assurances. From 2025, every new investment in Poznań must retain 87% of precipitation from the first 15 minutes of downpour on-site. This means the necessity of building retention tanks or rain gardens. In October 2024, we corrected a project in Piątkowo where the architect forgot about new guidelines regarding the distance of tanks from foundations. Thanks to quick intervention, we avoided an installation reconstruction for 134,000 PLN, and the case in the office went through without unnecessary moves.

We have known these procedures since September 2016 and we know that officials from the Department of Shaping and Environmental Protection are increasingly meticulous. In 2024, our team analyzed 19 recent negative environmental decisions in Poznań. In 13 cases, the reason was the lack of specific calculations regarding the impact on local high greenery. Casacombug Urban Lobby has its own database of groundwater levels in 7 Poznań districts, which allows us to prepare an application that no one will challenge over their first coffee at the office. The paperwork simply must be clean.

Real deadlines in Poznań offices

If you plan to start construction for July 2025, then your applications should be in the office now. The average waiting time for a building permit (PnB) alone in Poznań at Gronowa Street is currently 74 business days, provided you do not get a request to supplement gaps. Casacombug Urban Lobby shortens this time by about 31 days because we eliminate formal errors before shipping documents. In 2024, we handled 53 PnB applications, 48 of which passed in the first instance. This is a result that allows developers to realistically plan for construction crews entering the site.

A day's delay on-site, taking into account interest on investment loans and office maintenance costs, costs a developer an average of 2,840 PLN for a 60-apartment project. We know these procedures and we know that most time is lost on coordination between ZDM, Aquanet, and utility operators. At Casacombug Urban Lobby, we have a dedicated person who twice a week checks the status of cases in each of these places. No unnecessary moves, we watch the deadlines so your folder doesn't sit at the bottom of the stack because of a registry clerk's error, which happened 11 times in March 2024 alone.

Concrete facts on the table: our effectiveness results from knowing who in a given department handles a specific street. Poznań is divided into regions and every official has their preferences regarding the form of submitting graphic attachments. For example, in Smochowice, additional shadow analyses are required, which are often forgotten by design offices from other cities. We have been working locally for over 8 years and have guided 483 cases through offices. The paperwork must be correct, because every correction is another 14 days of waiting for a response from the office. We save that time for you.

A day's delay on-site is an average of 2,840 PLN loss. We shorten waiting times for decisions by over a month.