Problem

Ukraine has a significant number of cultural heritage sites. In order to determine whether a particular landmark has legal protection and the status of a cultural heritage site, it is necessary to create a single public data source – an electronic register containing information on immovable cultural heritage sites of national and local significance, as well as newly discovered sites that also receive legal protection on a par with the cultural heritage sites included in the register. The absence of a publicly available, reliable (recognized by the state) and complete source of information creates major hurdles for business entities (investors, developers) due to the inability to determine whether a particular site belongs to cultural heritage landmarks, while making it difficult for cultural heritage protection authorities and architectural and construction control and supervision authorities to determine the correct permit issuance procedure.
In addition to the absence of a single and complete list of cultural heritage sites, challenges are also presented by the failure to establish the conditions of use and boundaries of historic areas of population centers, the boundaries and conditions of use of protection zones around cultural heritage sites approved by research and design documentation, and the fact that they are not mapped out in situ. After all, without clear boundaries of historic areas, it is impossible to determine within which territory it is necessary to obtain approvals and permits from the cultural heritage protection authority, and without conditions of use of historic areas, conditions of use of protection zones around cultural heritage sites it is impossible to give a clear answer regarding the permitted type of activity (and permitted type of construction that will not have a negative impact on cultural heritage sites).
There is no clear legislatively prescribed procedure for granting permits and approvals in the field of cultural heritage protection and no exhaustive list of documents to be submitted for obtaining approvals, permits, or the conditions for obtaining approvals, permits and grounds for refusal to grant them. Regulation of this issue at the level of bylaws contravenes the approaches prescribed by the rule of law and creates significant hurdles for applicants. At the same time, services are provided without sufficient transparency of the procedure, which makes it impossible to verify its correctness or compliance with the law.
In addition, the cultural heritage protection authorities are granted broad discretionary powers where there should be only an obligation to act in a certain way, i.e., the legislation provides only for the possibility (right) to respond to violations, but not the obligation to take measures to stop the violation and bring the perpetrator to justice. The lack of publicly available information on measures taken by cultural heritage protection authorities, decisions made, permits issued, approvals, orders, etc. regarding a cultural heritage site deprives the public of control, which (in addition to the existence of a number of discretionary powers) creates extensive opportunities for abuse.