Andrei Kostyanov, Deputy Executive Director of NP ZHKKh Kontrol, emphasized in his welcome remarks that residents of apartment buildings (ABs) must remain responsible owners who don’t forget to care about the common property of the house and express their active position. The speaker settled upon three main and the most relevant issues of the legislation in this field: discrepancies in findings of the court during analysis of similar cases, loose terms for rent of building faces and capture of the common property of the house, seeing information boards of organizations as advertising, and dismounting of ancillary equipment on buildings after organizations are recognized as bankrupts.

“For example, when air conditioners are installed on faces of the buildings, in some cases agreement of 100% residents is required, in some – the agreement of a majority, and others – just a special consent,” the speaker shared.

“Responsibility is a reverse side of law,”Sergey Kupchenko, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg, assures. The speaker drew attention of experts to a need for examination and consideration of possible consequences for all constituent entities of the Russian Federation when amending a law. One and the same draft of legislation can successfully function in large metropolises while being completely unadaptable in small settlements. The experts called for making a consolidated document with suggestions for a workgroup which would be gathered as soon as possible to issue amendments to the existing legislation based on results of the discussion.

Igor Kolesnikov, project manager in field of Urban Economy of the Institute for Urban Economics Foundation, examined possible approaches to coordination and placement of ancillary equipment. Today’s approach means that individual decisions are made by each owner resulting in certain problems: unattractive appearance of house faces, damages to house structures, disbalance of systems inside the house. The expert is confident that the situation can be improved with introduction of template project solutions reinforced due to coordination with all owners and implemented with public funds, as well as with making transformations in question a part of the AB capital repairs.

Alexander Leontyev, First Deputy Chair of the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Landmarks, reminded that it’s mandatory for project documentation to undergo a historical and artistic examination when carrying out any activities on modernization or restoration of buildings that are cultural heritage sites, even as simple as installation of security cameras. Meanwhile, organizations that carry out works on adjustments for buildings often don’t get the consent of residents which results in a ‘point of social tension’, and the Committee on State Control doesn’t have authorities to get such a permission or resources to check the authenticity of coordination of AB property owners when remodeling is done or ancillary equipment is installed.

“Introduction of digital technologies can either be a solution to the problem or create further confusion,” the speaker reflected.

Elena Yachmeneva, Deputy Head of the Petrogradsky District, told about the experience of using IT tools presenting a unified online platform where the user can see a list of ancillary equipment in their house and check legitimacy of its installation. At the moment, the system contains information about more than 7,113 elements of utility equipment attached to 3,131 premises in 1,240 apartment buildings.

“The main objective of the portal is control over receipt of monetary funds to accounts of property management companies and goals these funds are spent on,” the expert informed. “In the end, we received a functional tool that takes everything into account.”

Alexey Moor, Deputy Head of the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture, Chief Artist, and Elena Kirichenko, Head of the Urban Environment Office of the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture, also noted the importance of establishment of clear and accurate system rules that would be extremely transparent and easy to understand for all participants of the process. Elena Kirichenko supported the idea of placing information in a unified digital system and highlighted that in terms of preservation of faces of buildings considered cultural heritage sites, it was also necessary to introduce a list of all decorative elements of faces that could be easily lost in the course of improper maintenance.

Yaroslav Ivanov, Deputy Head of the Committee on Press and Mass Media Relations, clarified the issue of differentiation between advertising and information structures on faces of buildings.

In the framework of the roundtable discussion some regional experts spoke: Olga Frolova, Regional Centre of Public Control ZHKKh Kontrol (Voronezh), who told about existing solutions that allowed making all faces of building in Voronezh unified, and Darya Krylova, Civic organization The Union of Crimean House Managers, who shared some facts about positive legal practice in the region.

Yulia Charnotskaya, a lawyer of NCO St. Petersburg Foundation for SME Development under the Governor of St. Petersburg, called to fight against manifestations of consumptive extremism in terms of placing signs, air conditioners and air extraction systems on faces of houses, and suggested unifying rent of space tariffs or differentiating them by city districts.

Also, the online event was attended by Eleonora Vasilyeva, Deputy Director General of Renessans-S, and Yury Sopin, CEO of Nash Dom Saint Petersburg LLC, Deputy Board Chairperson of the Regional Civic Organization Nash Dom Na Neve (“Our House on the Neva River”), who presented results of longstanding work on dismantling advertising structures illegally placed in the Moskovsky District of Saint Petersburg – during numerous inspections over 500 banners and signs were identified and dismantled.

The event was concluded by the moderator of the online meeting Alla Bredets, Head of Regional Centre of Public Control ZHKKh Kontrol, Board Chairperson of the Regional Civic Organization Nash Dom Na Neve, who highlighted the importance and need of constructive dialogue between agencies, representatives of business and property owners that allowed not only finding the truth, but also improving all the complicated system of urban beautification and common property maintenance.

Sponsor of the event is Gazprombank (Joint Stock Company).

The broadcast of the roundtable discussion is available on the website of the project.