You usually have 14 days from service to appeal against a decision. For a complaint to the administrative court, usually 30 days. Reinstatement of a missed deadline is possible but exceptional, which is why in administrative matters it does not pay to put your response off.
An administrative decision starts to take effect not when you read it, but when it has been effectively served. The time limit for responding runs from that date.
Administrative cases are often lost not because the arguments are missing. They are lost because the appeal or the complaint was filed too late. For an appeal against a decision you usually have 14 days. For a complaint to the Voivodeship Administrative Court, usually 30 days. For certain procedural rulings the limit may be as short as 7 days.
So the first question after receiving a letter from an authority is not “is the authority right?”. The first question is “by when can I still do something about it?”.
Step 1. Check exactly what you have received
Not every letter from an authority is a decision. You may receive a decision, a procedural ruling, a notification, a summons or an informational letter. Each may have different effects and a different deadline for responding.
Start with the heading, the operative part and the instruction on remedies. That instruction should state whether an appeal, an interlocutory appeal, a request for reconsideration or a complaint to an administrative court is available. It is not worth reading it uncritically, though. Authorities make mistakes too, and sometimes the instruction is incomplete or unclear.
If you have received a decision of a first-instance authority, the appropriate remedy will most often be an appeal. If you have received a ruling of a second-instance authority, a complaint to the Voivodeship Administrative Court usually has to be considered. If the letter is a procedural ruling, the deadline may be shorter - often 7 days.
Step 2. Appeal against a decision: usually 14 days from service
An appeal against an administrative decision is, as a rule, filed within 14 days of the decision being served. What counts is not the date shown on the decision, nor the date you actually found time to read it. What counts is the date of service.
An appeal is not filed directly with the higher-instance authority. It is filed through the authority that issued the decision. This matters, because sending the letter to the wrong place can complicate the case needlessly.
If the deadline is close, do not wait for the perfect appeal. In ordinary administrative proceedings an appeal does not need extensive reasoning. It does, however, have to make clear that you disagree with the decision and what you are asking for. The arguments can be organised later, but no amount of drafting stops the clock.
Step 3. Complaint to the administrative court - usually 30 days
If the matter has already been through a second-instance authority, the next step may be a complaint to the Voivodeship Administrative Court. The time limit for filing it is usually 30 days from service of the ruling in the case.
The complaint is not sent directly to the court. It is filed through the authority whose action or ruling you are challenging. The authority then forwards it to the court together with the case file and its response to the complaint.
A complaint to the administrative court is not simply another appeal. As a rule the administrative court reviews the legality of the decision - that is, whether the authority applied the law correctly, conducted the proceedings properly and gave adequate reasons. At this stage, therefore, the work is not about what “feels unfair” but above all about what was unlawful or procedurally defective.
Step 4. Watch out for enforcement of the decision
An appeal filed in time generally suspends enforcement of the decision. That does not mean you can always simply wait. If the decision was given immediate enforceability, or a specific provision requires immediate enforcement, the situation is different.
With a complaint to the administrative court the rule is stricter still, because filing the complaint does not by itself suspend enforcement. If enforcing the decision could cause significant harm or effects that are hard to reverse, a separate application to stay enforcement has to be considered.
This matters especially in cases involving administrative fines, permits, orders, environmental decisions, development condition decisions or business activity. Sometimes challenging the decision is not enough on its own to stop its effects.
Step 5. Reinstating a deadline is an exception, not a fallback plan
If the deadline has passed, in some situations you can apply to have it reinstated. This is not, however, a second chance for anyone who simply left the matter for later.
You have to make it credible that the deadline was missed through no fault of your own. Merely overlooking the letter, being overloaded with work, or assuming there was “still time” will usually not be enough.
The application to reinstate the deadline must be filed quickly, as a rule within 7 days of the cause of the failure ceasing. At the same time you have to perform the act the deadline related to - that is, file the appeal or the complaint. The application on its own, without the proper document, does not solve the problem.
What is worth preparing
Before you call, have ready the decision or ruling, the envelope, the confirmation of receipt, the official certificate of service or the record from the ePUAP platform. In administrative matters the date of service is often just as important as the content of the decision.
Also gather the earlier documents in the case: the application, the authority’s replies, summonses, notifications, attachments, correspondence and anything you filed during the proceedings. If the matter has already been to the second instance, the first-instance decision and the appeal will be needed as well.
Three things matter most: what you received, when it was served, and which remedy is available.
In short
- Once a decision has been served, work out the deadline first.
- An appeal against an administrative decision is usually filed within 14 days of service.
- A complaint to the Voivodeship Administrative Court is usually filed within 30 days of service of the ruling.
- For certain procedural rulings the limit may be 7 days.
- Reinstating a deadline is possible but exceptional. You have to make the absence of fault credible and act immediately once the cause has ceased.
- If you have received a decision you disagree with, do not wait until the deadline runs out. In administrative matters a few days of delay can decide the whole case.
This article is for information only and does not constitute legal advice. Assessing a specific case requires reviewing the documents.