MIT on film - it's now or never, says Valencia
This is their final opportunity to obtain permits to regularise their situation: if they miss this train, there will not be another one, states regional government
A 22-minute-long video about MIT licences – the procedure designed to legalise homes built on greenbelt land in the countryside – has been produced by regional expat commissioner for town planning, John Kirby.
The step-by-step guide explaining the process can be viewed via YouTube (see the link below).
It is entitled ‘MIT licenses: proving your eligibility for individual (DSI) requests + application form (GV 60301)’.
In the video Mr Kirby sets out the MIT licence eligibility criteria, the criteria for individual and collective procedures and the documentation required for proof of compliance in the individual licence (DSI) request.
Mr Kirby urged illegal homeowners to watch the video.
He said: “We’re very happy to announce that MIT licences are now a reality.
“They are being issued in many towns and villages as we speak.
“This is a unique opportunity – it has never happened before.”
He noted that the video is to ‘help people, especially foreigners, take their first steps in the process’.
It aims to guide owners through the first phase of the two-step application process, the MIT declaration.
“It’s easy to do, it’s user friendly and if you have any questions you can send them into the paper for us to answer or you can attend one of our outreach events to ask us directly,” said Mr Kirby.
The next meetings will be held in Lliria and Orihuela, with ‘dates to be confirmed in a question of days’.
Mr Kirby added: “There is no advantage to waiting, if you find yourself in need of a MIT licence start the process today.”
View the video at https:// tinyurl.com/49mhbx7f
If you are having trouble finding the video send an
email to the address at the end of the story.
MIT in motion
The regional town planning department run by Vicente García Nebot notes that territorial impact minimisation – which has the acronym MIT in Spanish – is the ‘regularisation of dwellings built on greenbelt land’.
A survey found that there are 194,000 illegal properties of this kind situated in the countryside of the Valencia region alone.
The process seeks ‘to minimise the environmental impact generated by dwellings built in an unregulated manner on greenbelt land’.
Guidelines have been produced for town halls and
other interested parties as ‘the number of cases generated is immense and it has therefore been deemed necessary to provide help to interpret the law, so that the procedures can be put into operation’.
This is designed to produce ‘practical solutions that will drastically reduce the impact of these dwellings on our territory’.
“The 2019 Law on spatial planning, urban planning and landscape (LOTUP) offers local councils and property owners an instrument that, in exchange for encouraging them to regularise their properties, will require them to stop illegal dumping into the subsoil via absorbent cesspits that pollute our aquifers, to integrate their properties into the rural landscape or to adopt measures to mitigate the dangers posed by the challenge of climate change, such as floods or fires,” notes the guidelines.
The department adds: “The use of an extraordinary declaration of community interest is their final opportunity to obtain permits to regularise their situation: if they miss this train, there will not be another one.”
Therefore, the regional department ‘urges all local councils and affected property owners to begin such regularisation processes by initiating the minimisation procedures, both on an individual and collective basis’.