Procuratorial public interest litigation urged a number of law enforcement agencies to work together to dismantle the illegal construction of the roof.

Thirty-eight merchants illegally built illegal buildings on the roof, prosecuted public interest litigation and urged a number of law enforcement agencies to work together to dismantle them-

The fire hazard on the roof "vanished"

Demolished foam sandwich panel

Prosecutors register security risks one by one during the investigation.

Prosecutors follow up and supervise the demolition of illegal buildings on the roof.

The Zhongjia Decoration City in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, is quite lively because of its dual-purpose residence and dense personnel. However, 38 merchants have successively built illegal buildings on the roofs of six buildings for hotel management, goods storage and office work without the permission of the construction project planning.

Since April 2020, the procuratorial organ of Taizhou City has set up a public interest litigation case-handling team to file a case for review, and joined forces with law enforcement departments such as Taizhou City Administration Bureau and Fire Rescue Detachment to promote the demolition of 11,095 square meters of illegal buildings. Now, standing under the Zhongjia Decoration City, you can no longer see the illegal buildings on the roof, and the merchants downstairs don’t have to worry about the fire caused by illegal buildings.

In March 2021, the case was selected as a "typical case of public interest litigation in the field of safety production" jointly issued by the Supreme Inspection and Emergency Management Department.

In the event of a fire, the consequences are unimaginable.

One day in March, 2020, Jingtai Road Sub-district Office in Hailing District, Taizhou City received an anonymous complaint phone: "There are a lot of flammable materials such as paint piled up on the roof of Zhongjia Decoration City, and our residents living downstairs are on tenterhooks every day. Come and take care of it, or the consequences will be unimaginable in the event of a fire!" Liu Lusheng, director of the Comprehensive Law Enforcement Bureau of Jingtai Road Street, said that this is not the first time they have received such a complaint call.

It is reported that Zhongjia Decoration City covers an area of about 295 mu and is located in the core area of the eastern market group in Hailing District, Taizhou City. The new and old National Highway 328 meet here, three kilometers away from Taizhou Railway Station, and the traffic is very convenient. Since its operation in March 2010, more than 600 merchants have settled in. Zhongjia Decoration City is used for both commercial and residential purposes. Some merchants privately build colored steel houses on the roof to stack building materials and goods, including some inflammable and explosive materials. At first, illegal construction was only sporadic, but over time, it reached more than 10 thousand square meters. The common people have great opinions on this.

"Prosecutor Chen, the problem of disorderly construction on the roof of Zhongjia Decoration City has not been solved until now. The security risks are serious and the opinions of the masses are great. I know that the procuratorate can file a public interest lawsuit. Can you come forward to coordinate and urge the administrative law enforcement agencies to pay attention to this problem?" On the afternoon of March 28th, 2020, Chen Hongjun, the person in charge of public interest litigation in Hailing District Procuratorate, received a phone call from Xiao Li, a street worker in Jingtai Road. Chen Hongjun has long heard that the problem of disorderly building on the roof of Zhongjia Decoration City is a "long-standing problem". Chen Hongjun asked Xiao Li about the situation in detail. Xiao Li said helplessly that the street office had no law enforcement power and could only communicate with merchants as much as possible, but it still did not see rectification.

Chen Hongjun immediately reported the clue to the procurator-general Shen Yujun. Subsequently, under the guidance of street worker Xiao Wu, Chen Hongjun and his colleagues conducted a preliminary investigation on the illegal construction of the decoration city. When climbing the roof from the safe passage, because the passage is full of wooden boards, aluminum alloy window frames and other sundries, everyone can only stand on tiptoe sideways and walk up the stairs carefully.

Climbing on the roof, the chaotic illegal buildings caught everyone’s eye. "You see, this is built by the following owners." Xiao Wu pointed to an illegal building on the left and told Chen Hongjun. Through the window of the illegal building, Chen Hongjun found that it was full of paint buckets.

"This hotel has built a whole floor on the roof, all of which are decorated into guest rooms. It is completely invisible that it is an illegal building." Chen Hongjun followed Xiao Wu’s direction and saw that the top of the opposite building, No.39, was also covered with illegal buildings, almost equal to the area of the sixth floor, which was very unsightly.

Xiao Wu took Chen Hongjun and others to the sixth floor of a unit in Building 24, and happened to meet Manager Zhang of the construction company. Xiao Wu greeted Manager Zhang, and then a group of people went to the roof. Here is another office of this company, with offices, reception rooms, etc., which are completely consistent with the downstairs decoration style.

"Mr. Zhang, you have stamped such a large area on it. Have you been approved by the relevant departments?" Chen Hongjun asked.

"No, no, how can this be approved?" Manager Zhang’s answer is also frank.

Chen Hongjun asked, "Why did you add this layer?"

"When it was built, it was because the roof was not well waterproof, and there was always water seeping down when it rained." Manager Zhang replied.

"Then why not make a waterproof again? There are great security risks in illegal construction. I hope you will take the lead in dismantling it. " Chen Hongjun further said.

"I really have no choice but to dismantle it. Others will dismantle it, but I will definitely not take the lead." Manager Zhang gave his own set of rhetoric.

After a preliminary investigation, Chen Hongjun made a basic judgment: some owners of Zhongjia Decoration City actually built illegal buildings on the roof for their own benefit, which not only seriously affected the appearance of the city, but also had major fire hazards.

Go door to door and find out the crux of the problem.

According to Article 64 of the Urban and Rural Planning Law, if a construction project planning permit is not obtained or is not carried out in accordance with the provisions of the construction project planning permit, the competent department of urban and rural planning of the local people’s government at or above the county level shall order it to stop construction. Obviously, it is impossible for the top building of Zhongjia Decoration City to obtain a planning permit for the construction project, which is bound to be illegal construction. However, the supervision of illegal construction does not belong to the "4+1" field of public interest litigation. On what grounds should procuratorial organs intervene and promote the demolition of illegal buildings?

After Chen Hongjun reported the initial investigation to the leaders of the hospital, Hailing District Procuratorate thought that it was necessary to deeply analyze the impact of illegal buildings on public safety and solve the problem of how to choose between personal self-interest and public interest. On April 1st, 2020, according to the analysis and research, the institute formulated a public interest litigation investigation plan: collecting relevant evidence to confirm that the roof construction of Zhongjia Decoration City did not obtain the construction project planning permit, confirming the illegality of its construction, and at the same time conducting household surveys to identify potential safety hazards and collect fixed evidence. In order to solve professional problems, it is necessary to hire a third-party professional organization to conduct simultaneous demonstration.

According to the investigation plan, Liu Junhe, assistant procurator, brought back the architectural archives of Zhongjia Decoration City from Taizhou Urban Construction Archives with the notice of obtaining evidence. Nearly 1,000 scanned building files were read page by page by Chen Hongjun, Liu Jun and others, and the project establishment, permission, construction and acceptance of Zhongjia Decoration City were comprehensively reviewed. It was confirmed that the buildings on the top of Buildings 22, 24, 25, 38, 39 and 40 of this decoration city were not within the scope of project establishment and permission, and it was undisputed that they were illegal buildings.

On April 6, Chen Hongjun led the public interest litigation case-handling team to formally enter Zhongjia Decoration City, and went to Zhongjia Decoration City with Jingtai Road Street and third-party organizations to carry out house-to-house investigation on illegal buildings.

"Look, this is a foam sandwich panel, which is flammable and combustible building materials. Rock wool board should be used as a flame retardant building material. " "This distribution box is bare and unobstructed, and the wires are aging without sleeves, which is also a great safety hazard."……Experts from third-party organizations carefully search for potential safety hazards in illegal buildings.

The case-handling team fixed the security risks pointed out by experts one by one and recorded them one by one. At the same time, another team is also carrying out information verification and related data collection of illegal owners. "I built the house upstairs, how do you people’s procuratorate also tube somebody else to build a house? Is it too wide? " The owner is quite dissatisfied with the "sudden arrival" of the prosecutor. "You are illegally building and have an impact on social welfare. We have to take care of it." After understanding the public interest litigation function of the prosecutor, the owner copied the relevant information and handed it over.

For four whole days, by verifying the owner’s information, construction time, area, building materials, use and other materials of illegal construction, the case-handling team conducted on-site investigation on the safety hazards such as fire protection, electricity and lightning protection in various illegal constructions, and basically found out the illegal construction and the existing public safety hazards: 38 owners built illegal buildings on the roofs of six buildings without the permission of the construction project planning, resulting in a series of safety hazards such as flammable building materials, blocked safety passages and incomplete fire-fighting facilities. The third party organization also issued a safety hazard inspection report, and found that there were 52 safety hazards in the above illegal construction, such as flammable foam sandwich panel building materials, no fire-fighting facilities, and damaged lightning protection grounding network.

Procuratorial suggestions condense the joint efforts of public welfare protection

Because the case involved the performance of duties by higher administrative organs, Hailing District Procuratorate always kept close contact with Taizhou Procuratorate, reported the progress of the work at any time, and submitted the case to the Municipal Procuratorate for handling after the investigation. On July 31, 2020, Taizhou City Procuratorate delivered pre-litigation procuratorial suggestions to Taizhou City Administration Bureau and Fire Rescue Detachment respectively, suggesting that they deal with illegal construction and fire safety violations on the roof of Zhongjia Decoration City respectively according to law.

Sun Guiyin, director of Taizhou City Administration Bureau, called Hailing District Government Office, Urban Management Bureau, Lightning Protection Office and other departments to hold a special rectification meeting on illegal construction of Sino-Jia Decoration City the day after receiving the procuratorial suggestions, and invited the procuratorial organs to send personnel to participate and discuss the rectification countermeasures. Because the demolition of illegal construction involves the property interests of many merchants, the procuratorial organ took the initiative to organize the Hailing District Urban Management Bureau, the fire rescue brigade and the street office to hold a joint meeting to unify the understanding of the problems that may be encountered in the remediation process and make detailed preparations to ensure the smooth and orderly progress of the demolition work. In August, Taizhou Urban Management Bureau made an administrative penalty decision on 24 illegal construction owners who had not been punished according to law, and ordered them to dismantle illegal construction within a time limit.

After receiving the procuratorial suggestions, Taizhou Fire Brigade asked Hailing District Fire Rescue Brigade to cooperate with it according to law. The District Fire Rescue Brigade quickly formulated an action plan and deployed it for implementation, and arranged business backbones to cooperate with Hailing District Urban Management Bureau, Housing and Construction Bureau and other departments to strengthen business guidance to Jingtai Road Street and police stations under its jurisdiction, and timely discuss and dispatch hidden dangers for rectification. At the same time, the Fire Rescue Brigade, together with relevant departments, issued the Notice of Market Fire Safety, which was not only distributed door to door, but also posted at the entrance and exit of Zhongjia Decoration City and other eye-catching locations, giving fire safety tips to all merchants in Decoration City, pointing out the hazards of various fire hazards and fire safety violations, and organizing fire safety knowledge training to urge them to implement the main responsibility of fire safety. In addition, the District Fire Rescue Brigade also stepped up supervision and law enforcement, inspected 38 merchants with illegal construction problems one by one, urged and rectified 12 fire hazards, issued 12 notices of ordering correction, handled 1 temporary seizure, and sent 2 letters of advice on law enforcement.

On August 14th, Jingtai Road Sub-district took the lead in organizing a number of functional departments to participate in it. By focusing on the way of "door-to-door publicity+friendly demolition assistance+investigation and punishment according to law", the illegal construction demolition work was jointly promoted, and waterproof construction was carried out at the demolition site, which solved the problem of roof seepage raised by merchants. Chen Hongjun and his colleagues followed up and supervised the demolition of illegal construction.

In Taizhou in August, the sun is like fire. At 9 o’clock in the morning, on the uncovered roof, the temperature had already soared above 30 degrees Celsius. The blue colored steel tiles were uncovered one by one, the heavy walls were smashed one by one, and the doors and windows were removed one by one. The whole removal process was basically smooth.

As of November 30, 11,095 square meters of illegal buildings on the top of the commercial and residential building of Zhongjia Decoration City were all demolished, and the fire safety hazards caused by illegal construction were completely eliminated. "If it weren’t for the persistence of the procuratorate and the joint efforts of fire protection, urban management and streets, I don’t know when the fire hazard on the roof will be eliminated." Boss Gu, who is engaged in building materials and sanitary ware business on the first floor, can’t help but sigh.

"We identified the supervision points, conducted a comprehensive and detailed investigation on illegal construction and public safety hazards, and finally promoted the complete dismantling of illegal construction, fundamentally eliminated the long-standing public safety hazards, effectively prevented and curbed the occurrence of serious accidents, and the safety of people’s lives and property was effectively maintained." Chen Hongjun said with some relief.

(Reporter Lu Zhijian   Correspondent Ge Dongsheng   Song Diyu)