1.5 Main elements

At present the structure and form of spatial management plans, as well as the methods of their developing are not unified in Poland. There is a big diversification and it is difficult to point at typical examples. It is a reaction of regional planners and town planners to a unified, detailed and restricting instructions used in PRL. The Association of Polish Town Planners and Town Planners' Chambers try to introduce some standards in that area throughout organizing conferences and trainings. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult due to the lack of legal regulations.

All the plans of spatial management consist of a textual, tabular and graphic part. All parts are equally important and valuable. The most important and binding is a plan blueprint. Cartographic studies for local plans are made in the scales, which extort big formats. It makes it difficult to have them published and made available.

In recent years digital plans have become common. Some regions, towns and communes make the existing voivodship spatial management plans available (fully or partly) on their Internet websites. The same refers to studies of the conditions and directions of the spatial management of a commune.

The only legally binding local plans of spatial management are made in a paper form in a small number of copies. From a formal point of view they constitute annexes to proper resolutions of the commune council. Projects of plans are made available to the public in the process of drawing them up. After passing extracts and excerpts are made available to the authorized interested parties. However, in practice, a public access to the binding (current) planning documents is difficult. It seriously limits social control over the execution of plans. There is no legal obligation to publish spatial plans. Some communes make them available using the websites.