Since August 1, 2024, every new multi-family residential building in Poland must include a room for bikes and baby strollers of at least 15 m². The rule runs to three clauses and doesn't say a word about electrical wiring. Below: the literal text, what it leaves out, and what that means once residents start showing up on electric bikes.
The requirement was added by a regulation from Poland's Ministry of Development and Technology, issued on 27 October 2023 (official text). Here's what it says:
The basic rule. Every new multi-family residential building must include a utility room for storing bicycles and baby strollers. The room sits near the building's entrance, or on an underground floor if that floor has lift or ramp access meeting the applicable accessibility standards.
An alternative. Instead of a room inside the building, this space is allowed to be a separate structure instead: a utility building, a shelter, or a gazebo.
The minimum size. Whichever form is chosen, the room, building, shelter or gazebo needs at least 15 m² of floor space.
Effective date: August 1, 2024. The regulation was originally due to take effect on April 1, 2024; the date was pushed back four months by a follow-up regulation issued on 27 March 2024 (see the amendment). Projects with a building permit application filed before the original date follow the previous rules.
Conversations and paperwork use two different names, but the regulation describes one thing: a utility room for storing bicycles and baby strollers. It's one room with one 15 m² minimum, not two separate requirements to add up.
That matters for design: the room has to fit both uses at once, plus the space to move around in it. Bikes take up length, strollers take up width and turning room, and both come through the same doorway.
The stroller side, covering floor area, what may be stored inside and where house-rule restrictions come from, is in stroller room in apartment buildings: rules and what you can keep in it.
| Requirement | What it says | What this means for the project |
|---|---|---|
| Mandatory | "a utility room must be provided" | Applies to every multi-family residential building. Not optional |
| Location | near the entrance, or on an underground floor | Underground is allowed only with a lift or ramp that meets the building's accessibility rules |
| Floor area | at least 15 m² | A hard minimum, not a recommendation |
| Alternative form | a utility building, shelter or gazebo | An outdoor structure counts the same as a room inside the building |
| Scope | multi-family residential buildings | Doesn't apply to hotels, office buildings, or shopping centres |
| No per-unit formula | 15 m², regardless of the number of apartments | The minimum stays the same no matter how big the building is |
The regulation doesn't require a room inside the building. It explicitly allows a separate utility building, shelter or gazebo instead. For a developer that's a choice between an underground floor and a freestanding structure, and the two paths carry different costs, fire-safety implications and upkeep.
The regulation gives one number: 15 m². It doesn't specify the room's dimensions, the number of spaces or the width of the aisle. Capacity comes down to geometry.
| Metric | Typical range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum floor area | 15 m² | straight from the regulation |
| Width per bike | 0.8–1.2 m | design practice, depends on the rack system |
| Depth per space | 1.8–2.0 m | bike length plus clearance |
| Capacity at 15 m² | roughly a dozen bikes | after subtracting aisle space and room for strollers |
Two things eat into that floor area faster than the arithmetic suggests. One is the aisle, since a bike gets wheeled in and out rather than parked sideways. The other is strollers, which take a differently shaped footprint in the same room.
A bike room designed at exactly 15 m² therefore fits fewer bikes than a developer expects, and electric bikes add the question of where charging goes in the same layout.
We checked the full text of the regulation. The word "charging" doesn't appear in it once. § 98a also says nothing about sockets, circuits or electrical wiring.
The practical result: § 98a doesn't require any charging infrastructure. Whether the bike room needs to support electric bikes is left entirely to the design and the developer.
The technical building code governs the building, not how people use it. For a designer or a building manager the consequence is the same: power in the bike room is a project decision, and someone has to make it. It costs least at the design stage.
We found nothing addressing charging electric bikes in a building's utility room, neither a ban nor a requirement. We checked the full text of the technical building code, the interior ministry's fire-safety regulation for buildings and the electromobility act. The word "bicycle" appears in none of them.
That is a statement about the scope of what we checked, not about the whole of Polish law. Either way, the practical consequence for a designer or building manager is the same: there's no normative document to point to directly.
The document most often cited here is a set of fire-safety guidelines from CNBOP-PIB, KG PSP, and PSNM, covering garages built for charging electric and plug-in hybrid cars. Its title and stated scope cover cars, and the document itself is an industry recommendation, not generally binding law.
So a designer whose client asks about charging e-bikes in a garage has no normative document written specifically for bicycles to point to.
Poland's State Fire Service publishes rules for safely charging e-bike and e-scooter batteries. One of them is direct: don't use extension cords or power strips (State Fire Service guidance).
That guidance targets makeshift setups: an extension cord run off a general-purpose socket, an overloaded power strip, a cable trailing across the garage floor. A permanent installation on its own dedicated circuit, with its own residual-current and overcurrent protection, is the opposite of that.
The rest of the fire service's guidance: use the original charger, charge on a surface that can handle heat, never leave a battery charging unsupervised or overnight, avoid temperatures above 40 °C or below 0 °C, check the battery and charger regularly, and keep them away from moisture.
Since the regulation is silent, the decision falls to the design and the building's house rules. Three things are worth putting in writing:
The regulation names both paths: an underground floor on one side, a freestanding shelter on the other. The choice carries consequences that go well beyond square metres.
If the bike room is underground, the wiring is usually already there and the question becomes how many charging points the existing circuit can support. The numbers are modest. A typical e-bike charger outputs 42 V / 2 A, around 84 W, and stronger 4 A versions draw around 168 W. A standard socket circuit, for comparison, is rated at 16 A.
What this doesn't settle: how many charging points a specific circuit in a specific building can take. That depends on the condition and load of the existing wiring, the protection devices in place and the design assumptions behind them, so the call belongs to an electrician or the installation designer.
§ 98a doesn't set a number of spaces, only a 15 m² floor area. The number of spaces comes from the local zoning plan, which varies from one municipality to the next.
Check your local zoning plan. There's no nationwide figure for how many bike spaces a residential building needs.
Three decisions the regulation won't make for the developer:
Tell us where the room will be and how many residents it serves. We'll get back to you on what's possible for charging.