Government legislation ministry rules minor urban plan changes need no public notice

The government legislation ministry said that local governments are not required to publicly notify minor changes to urban planning facility implementation plans made by private developers, closing a question raised by the city of Jeonju in North Jeolla Province.

The interpretation concerns Article 91 of the National Land Planning and Utilization Act, which requires the land minister, provincial governors and mayors of large cities to give public notice when they draw up, authorise, revoke or void an implementation plan for an urban planning facility project. The question was whether the same notice duty applies when a private developer that has already completed a project makes a minor change to the plan.

The ministry found that it does not. Under Article 88 of the act, a private developer who has received a completion inspection and later amends minor matters, or who changes minor matters in a plan that had already been authorised, is not required to obtain fresh authorisation from the land minister, a provincial governor or a large-city mayor. Because the plan is neither drawn up nor authorised by those authorities, the change falls outside the scope of Article 91.

The ministry added that the law provides no route by which such minor amendments reach the authorities in the first place: Article 88 does not require a private developer to report them, and the enforcement decree issued under Article 91 sets out only how notices are published.

The interpretation rejected the argument that residents' right to know should require publication of even minor amendments, saying that extending the notice requirement beyond the wording of Article 91 would be difficult. Any legislative fix is a separate policy question, it said, and in a recommendation attached to the ruling it said policymakers should decide whether to require private developers to report minor plan changes to the land minister, provincial governors or large-city mayors, and whether those authorities should then publish them.