Property legalisation deadline extended
Extra year promised along with a guide explaining the process
THE DEADLINE to regularise the status of many illegal homes under recent regional government legislation has been extended until 2021.
This was announced by regional town planning director general Vicente Garcia on a visit to Elche last week.
The reform of the regional planning law (LOTUP) was passed in February 2019 but established a deadline of one year to legalise homes that do not comply and were built before August 20, 2014.
However, town halls were uncertain how to apply this, with the mayoress of Catral telling Costa Blanca News last July that they were taking legal advice and ‘hope to create a protocol for owners to follow’.
With the deadline approaching this month, Redován town planning councillor José Nájar said it was being extended to next year ‘due to the difficulty and technical problems that town halls are having to process this zoning plan’.
Sr García also announced that a guide explaining the process to legalise homes would be published in the coming weeks, and Sr Najár said his town hall will wait for this so that they can ‘adjust the whole procedure to the new directives’.
He recently told residents at a public meeting that the town hall was finishing the first phase, which involves drawing up an ‘impact minimisation plan’, which would have to be approved by a full council meeting after a consultation with residents and then sent on to the regional government.
Many municipalities in the Vega Baja and Elche – as well as Llíber in the north of Alicante province – have hundreds of illegal homes built on farmland during the property boom, many of which were bought by unwitting Britons and other foreigners. Some of these buyers have spent thousands or euros on lawyers’ fees, unsuccessfully trying to legalise their situation.
Elderly British homeowners in poor health who want to return to the UK have become trapped because no-one will buy their homes.
The minimisation of impact is an opportunity for owners of illegally built homes to resolve the environmental problem they cause so that the property can be passed on as an inheritance, mortgages can be granted for them and alterations can be officially declared.
Sr García said: “We want to encourage everyone who is in this situation to act so that they can regularise their constructions, which we realise will mean a tsunami of applications for town halls.
“But this is what we want and it will enable people with no sewers and other irregularities to normalise the situation we have found ourselves in and reduce the environmental impact.”
He pointed out that the procedure will not only be applicable to residential properties but also to businesses activities that are functioning irregularly on land where building is not allowed.
They will be able to obtain a licence using a tool called a Disposición Transitoria 15 (transitory disposition).