Juan Luis Caparros, delegate of Public Works (Obras Publicas) of the Junta de Andalucia, has announced after a long meeting with the mayors of Albox, Arboleas, Zurgena, Cantoria, Lubrin, Albanchez and Partaloa that these municipalities will be included within the new Plan General de Inspección de Andalucía, the new legal framework the Junta is working on to legalise illegal houses.
The regulations for the new Plan General, which is expected to be finished and ratified by the end of the year, allows the Junta to include or exclude individual existing houses in municipal planning laws retrospectively.
The general idea is to survey each “illegal” house in these municipalities (and others across Andalucia) individually. Depending upon the results of the survey, three outcomes are possible:
- The house, if located near others (ie in an illegal urbanizacion) can be legalised as a block, and public infrastructure allocated. So, if there is an illegal urbanizacion that isn’t doing any harm, the Junta will legalise the lot and build roads, electric, sewer and the like. In certain cases they will also earmark that zone for future construction and expansion.
- The house, if alone but not doing any harm, may be allowed to stay but placed in a zona de protección especial which basically prevents any modifications to the house or any other houses to be built nearby – anyone who builds a house nearby will be prosecuted under penal law. This fits in with the Juntas attempts to prevent the construction of illegal “population zones”. No news on whether or not you could sell that house in the future.
- The house, if dangerous, unviable or in public land (ie natural park, riverbed, etc) will be demolished without compensation.
The mayors have all expressed “satisfaction” with this solution, and it has been called the “light at the end of the tunnel” by the vicemayor of Albox. If the Plan General is ratified by the Andalucian Parliment on time (mid December) then the first surveys will start early 2009. It is expected that some 6000 houses will be surveyed in the Almanzora valley alone.
No word on what will happen to illegal houses in municipalities that lie outside of the Plan General, such as Vera – the Plan General only applies to municipalities that are specified and contain great numbers of illegal houses. I assume that what court cases are carrying on will continue.
(taken from La Voz de Almería, 12th Sept 2008)
Hi,
Your article is slightly misleading. The original article states that the RULES of the Plan General de Inspeccion de Andalucia will be approved before December of this year. No timeline was given for the completion of the inspection or inventory of the illegal houses.
As he has stated on many other occasions, the article also quoted Mr. Caparros as stating that the homes would be regularised via the individual urban plans (Plan General de ORDENACION URBANA) or the Sub Regional Plan.
Regards,
Apologies – I did indeed mean the legal framework of the Plan General. The surveys are expected to start early next year if all goes well.
The Plan General allows the modification of the PGOUs which are specified in the Plan (the above mentioned villages) to include the illegal urban zones without having to redo the whole PGOU, something which is currently not possible.