A permit in Batumi is required in two cases. A change to the external appearance of the facade: glazing a balcony, replacing windows with ones of a different shape, external elements. And a change to load-bearing structures. Everything else — moving wet zones, demolishing or building non-load-bearing partitions, a new room layout — without a permit. Load-bearing is a separate story: "you can't on your own" doesn't mean "never." Through a structural engineer, a project and approval at City Hall, you can in principle alter load-bearing elements. Just not by yourself with a crew.
When a permit is actually needed
There are only two grounds, and they fit in your head without a memo.
Facade. If the client plans to change the external appearance of the building from the street side, that's a coordination matter. "Change of external appearance" includes: glazing an open balcony, replacing standard windows with panoramic ones, mounting external air-conditioner units on the front facade, moving or expanding window openings. The facade is shared property of the residents and an urban-planning object, so a decision about the balcony from the street is the municipality's competence, not the owner's personal preferences.
Load-bearing structures. Any intervention into the building's monolithic frame: cutting an opening through a load-bearing wall, widening a doorway at the expense of a load-bearing wall, cutting a piece out of the floor slab for a staircase, removing a column. This isn't "let's coordinate just in case" — without coordination you can't even begin the work.
What you can never do, even with a permit — touch the building-wide utilities in their main runs. The risers for sewerage, water, gas, the shared ventilation shaft pass through the entire section. They can't be moved, sealed shut, rotated or integrated into your apartment in a way that cuts neighbours off. By code, these elements need an inspection hatch and shared access for the management company.
If the work doesn't fall into these two categories, no permit is needed. Moving the kitchen into another room — without a permit. Demolishing the drywall partition between the living room and the hallway — without a permit. Combining two bathrooms into one — without a permit, provided no load-bearing elements are touched. A new layout for the children's room — without a permit.
Load-bearing structures: "not on your own" ≠ "never"
The main myth: "you can't touch load-bearing, period." That's a half-truth, and because of it people either give up on a good layout or do it on the quiet — which is worse.
The correct phrasing is this. Not on your own. With a structural engineer, a strengthening project and approval at City Hall — you can, on a case-by-case basis. The engineer does the calculation, designs the strengthening (a steel frame around the opening, additional posts, load redistribution), and these solutions go into the project, and the project goes for approval. Once approved, the work is carried out by a crew familiar with that strengthening. It's slower and more expensive than "the foreman said this wall is just there for nothing." In return, the building stays standing.
What happens without all that. In our experience, the typical story goes like this: the crew "widened the doorway by 15 cm," the client moved in, six months later — a diagonal crack. We investigate: the opening is cut into a load-bearing wall, no frame, the load shifted to the adjacent wall. Curing this already costs serious money — emergency strengthening, an inevitable conversation with the management company.
Liability for unauthorised work on load-bearing elements comes at three levels. Civil — if a neighbour is harmed by the work (a crack in their ceiling, a fallen tile, a ruined renovation), they file a claim. The bill goes to whoever ordered the work, not to the crew that did it. The crew has nothing on them legally — the client signed off, the client is liable. Administrative — a fine from the municipality and an order to restore the property to its original state. Criminal — collapse, injury, loss of life. That's no longer a fine.
And no, "the foreman said it was fine" doesn't work. The foreman isn't an engineer — he doesn't calculate the load, doesn't design the strengthening, isn't accountable for the structure. With load-bearing elements there's only one option: project and approval. Or we don't touch.
Facade and the purchase contract
Before putting panoramic glazing of a balcony, replacement of windows with non-standard ones or an external awning into the budget, you need to open your own purchase contract and read the section on restrictions.
In Batumi new builds, the developer often writes into the contract that the owner doesn't have the right to change the external attributes of the building. The most common wording concerns balconies specifically: "glazing in any form is prohibited; only the developer-approved template is permitted." Some people sign the contract without reading it, then start the renovation and learn about the ban from the neighbours or the management company. After that — dismantling at their own expense or a long dispute with the management.
The order is this. First the contract: are there restrictions, are there none, is there an approved template. Then City Hall — a permit for the specific facade work. Then the crew. In the reverse order, there's a strong chance that the beautiful panoramic glazing you paid for will have to come down.
Separately, on "everyone's doing it." Yes, most balcony glazings in older Batumi neighbourhoods aren't approved — that's a historical practice. In new builds with an active management company, that logic no longer works. The management documents the violation, sends a claim, and after that — administrative liability. On the secondary market the risk is lower, but not zero.
What you can do without a permit
Moving wet zones and non-load-bearing partitions
Clients from Russia and Ukraine usually aren't ready for this freedom: in Batumi, wet zones can be moved. Without a permit.
The kitchen can move into a former bedroom. The bathroom can expand at the expense of the hallway. The bathtub can swap places with the wardrobe. A shower can appear where there wasn't one before. The condition is — no load-bearing elements touched, the building-wide risers stay in the technical zone.
For those used to the Russian regulation, this is news. In Russia, moving a wet zone over a residential one (so that "above the neighbour's kitchen there's now my bathroom") is prohibited by housing law — you'd need a complex procedure with a project, expert review and approval at the housing inspectorate, which in practice almost never goes through. In Batumi this restriction doesn't exist. If the waterproofing is done technically correctly and the utilities are run, you can move it.
Moving a wet zone isn't equal to "moved a pipe and laid tile." It's a full assembly: floor and wall waterproofing to the required height, correct slope of the sewer pipe to the building riser, proper ventilation, water runs without hidden joints in the screed. Without that, a wet zone in a new location will start leaking to the neighbour below in a year or two. And for that damage the owner is liable in civil court.
Non-load-bearing partitions are a separate category. Drywall, foam block, aerated concrete, brick walls up to 12 cm thick without any architectural load — move them freely. This is an engineering task, not a permit task. You can remove the wall between the living room and the kitchen, combine two small bathrooms into one, separate a study from the bedroom with a new partition. No paperwork required for any of that.
Why Georgia has no equivalent of SNiP and what it means for the owner
"Which standards do they build to in Georgia?" — we hear this from clients on practically every first survey. There's no straight answer.
Georgia has no single set of construction codes in the form understood across the post-Soviet space. The thousand-page sector-by-sector regulations — "SNiP for plumbing," "SNiP for electrics," "SNiP for finishing" — that are mandatory on a renovation site don't exist as a body of law in this country. Some Soviet-era norms persist on construction sites as habit, some European standards are used in commercial-building design, but a mandatory code for the renovation of a private apartment isn't there.
What this means for the owner. Fewer formal restrictions — you can run electrics with a 3-phase supply and 25 A breakers, lay underfloor heating under tile without mandatory expert review, build a shower without a kerb. The flip side: there's no universally binding document the owner can lean on in a dispute with the crew — "you violated SNiP such-and-such." You have to lean on common sense, on international standards (IEC for electrics, EN for waterproofing), on the project and the contract.
The practical takeaway. In Georgia, the contract and the renovation project work where in Russia the codes used to. The contract has to be specific (what we're doing, from which materials, what guarantees), and the project has to be a working project (with layouts, elevations, specifications), not "nice renders by word of mouth." Otherwise there'll be nothing to dispute about — neither in pre-trial talks nor in court.
The situation itself isn't catastrophic. A competent team works to international standards on its own initiative — otherwise in two years problems will surface, and the rework will cost more than doing it right in the first place. An incompetent team works to no standard at all, and the existence of a SNiP wouldn't change that.
Approval at City Hall
Where to go: City Hall and the Architecture Service
If the work falls into the "requires a permit" category (facade or load-bearing), there's one path: Batumi City Hall, the Architecture and Urban Planning Service. All approvals in the city — from apartment layout changes to construction of new buildings — go through it.
Submission is by the owner in person or by a representative with a notarised power of attorney. Without a power of attorney, no one can act for the owner — "I asked the neighbour to take it in" doesn't work here. At City Hall, an application is opened, the document package is attached (see the next section), and review begins.
The timing and cost depend on the application's scope and the service's current load. I'm not naming specific figures here — they change, and any "in my data, review takes N days" will be untrue six months from now. Before submitting, it's better to drop into the Architecture Service in person or visit the City Hall website and check the current procedure.
After approval, the owner gets a document that protects them in inspections and in disputes with the management company or neighbours. Keep it — it'll come in handy when selling the apartment and at any future major renovation.
Documents for submission
What City Hall requests for a typical application. Some prepared in advance, some collected in the process.
Owner's passport and an extract from the public registry. The extract is fresh — usually no older than 30 days.
Technical passport for the apartment. It records the current parameters: area, room configuration, location of load-bearing elements. No passport, or it's outdated — order it from the BTI, that's a separate procedure with separate timing.
A sketch or plan of the proposed changes. A drawing from an architect or designer: what's there now, what's planned, what changes to walls, openings and engineering. "Hand-drawn" usually doesn't pass.
A structural engineer's report — if you're touching load-bearing elements. Load calculations, a strengthening scheme, and justification that the building stays stable. Without it, an application involving load-bearing work won't be accepted.
Depending on the nature of the work, City Hall may additionally request: neighbours' consent, a building inspection report, design documentation for engineering networks. So the submission is at least two visits. First — drop off the package and find out what's missing. Second — bring it.
A renovation project is needed in any case
Permit obtained or not — a renovation project is needed. Always.
In plain terms. Suppose no permit is required — we're only moving wet zones and non-load-bearing partitions. Without a project, the crew works "by word": the bathroom will be here, the kitchen there, sockets the usual way. Two weeks later the client comes to the site. Sockets in the bedroom by the door, not at the head of the bed. The toilet is 15 cm closer to the wall than it should be — the lid won't open fully. The basin was put under the window, and now the window can't be used. Each such error is a redo, two to three times more expensive than the planned work.
With a project, those same errors aren't there. A wall elevation with the client's signature is a document. If a socket is marked at the head of the bed on the drawing and installed by the door, the redo is at the crew's expense. If in the project the wet zones are tied to convenience and the risers at the same time, the toilet sits exactly where intended.
Now about money. From the project the estimate and specification are calculated. The client knows in advance: this apartment needs this many square metres of tile, this many metres of cable, this much pipe length. Without a project, purchases happen "as we go": today they call, tomorrow they deliver, the cost overrun shows up at the end of the month.
If approval is needed after all — the project, which you have anyway, goes straight to City Hall with the application. Otherwise you'd have to commission it specially for the approval, and that's more expensive than commissioning it for the whole renovation at once.
The link is simple. Project — mandatory. Permit — case by case, for two specific cases. One doesn't cancel the other: no permit requirement doesn't mean no project requirement.
FAQ
Takeaways
- A permit is needed in two cases. Facade and load-bearing.
- Moving wet zones in Batumi — without a permit, and that's a serious advantage compared to Russia.
- Move non-load-bearing partitions freely.
- Load-bearing on your own — never. Through an engineer and City Hall — yes.
- Before the renovation, open your purchase contract and check whether there's a ban on changing the facade (balcony).
- Georgia has no mandatory construction codes — disputes with the crew are fought on the contract and the project, not on regulations.
- For unauthorised work on load-bearing elements — administrative liability; if a neighbour is harmed — civil; in case of an incident — criminal.
- A renovation project is needed always. Whether or not a permit is required.