Hope for unfinished urbanisations
RESIDENTS of urbanisations in Orihuela Costa that were never properly finished and lack basic services have cause for cautious optimism after a motion to find a solution was approved in a full council meeting.
Opposition party Cambiemos Orihuela and its coalition partner CLARO were pleasantly surprised when their call for action received unanimous backing from the Partido Popular (PP)-Ciudadanos (Cs) coalition council.
They noted that the state of the town planning department is such that there is no information on the scale of this problem.
However, they understand that it affects thousands of property owners in several different urbanisations including Las Ocas, Mil Palmeras and Montezenia, amongst others.
Although the council should have taken over responsibility for maintenance of these urbanisations once they were completed, in many case developers were not supervised to ensure they fulfilled their contractual obligations so these projects were never signed off by the council.
Often these developers have ‘long since gone’ and the residents are left to put up with inadequate basic services even though they pay full rates and taxes.
According to CambiemosCLARO: “This is a major step forward since it obliges the government to provide complete details of all urbanisations in this situation (no-recepcionadas), to seek compliance by developers of outstanding obligations.
“If this is not possible, the government should provide the financial means to do so with a view to their formal acceptance by the town council and their inclusion in the full range of municipal services.”
They credited the citizens’ groups from these affected urbanisations, ‘whose relentless pressure over the years has led to this success’.
But they warned that they will need to ensure the council fulfils its responsibilities and in the meantime ‘facilitates all manner of specific help to deal with urgent problems in these shamefully abandoned urbanisations’.
They added that their motion also called for the council to ‘cease the endless approval of the construction of new housing in Orihuela Costa without ensuring adequate services’, warning that this ‘will require equal if not greater vigilance’.
This concern was highlighted on Tuesday, when the local government board approved licences to build another 237 homes in Orihuela Costa.
Town planning councillor José Aix announced that these are 38 homes and 38 swimming pools in sector Asomada Sur Parcela RB-2, three blocks with 56 apartments each and a communal pool in Asomada Sur Parcela RB-6, 31 homes and 31 pools in Asomadas Sur, Parcela 11, RB-1, and 11 more pools in calles Panticosa and Lago Sanabria.
Costa Blanca News asked Sr Aix why they have agreed to deal with the long-standing urbanisation problem now and what action they will take but he had not replied by the time of going to press.