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Three rulings by Spain's Supreme Court have left the owners of more than 16,500 homes built in Marbella since 1986 in legal limbo by declaring planning regulations void.
Puerto Banús Marbella1 300x225 - Court rulings in Spain create more uncertainty over illegal homesIn a series of decisions, the country's highest court has declared null and void Marbella's urban planning regulations that were passed in 2010 and which legalised thousands of homes constructed since the previous town plans, dating back to 1986, were approved.

In response to appeals against previous Supreme Court of Andalusia rulings, the rulings all arrived at the same conclusions, namely that the Town Council does not have power to retroactively declare legal properties that have been built illegally as that rests with the courts, nor to alter land classifications, nor legal liabilities.
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Three years after the Junta de Andalucía’s planning decree 2/2012 came into force, only half of the municipalities in the province of Málaga have actually made any progress in their part of the process. The decree, an attempt to bring some sort of order to the maze of illegal construction in rural areas, required local authorities to draw up an Spain4 300x128 - Half of the town halls in Málaga province have taken no steps to legalise homesinventory of structures on land classified as ‘no urbanizable’ or to hand in a declaration stating that there were none.

Few town halls in the province have done this, an essential step before the properties can be named as Asimilado a Fuera de Ordenación (AFO). This status in any case has been declared as unacceptable by many home owners as it merely allows the properties to remain standing without making them fully legal.
...continue reading "Half of the town halls in Málaga province have taken no steps to legalise homes"

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More than 50,000 properties in the countryside of Malaga province have still not been made legal, despite two years having passed since the Junta’s decree came into force.

estate in Malaga Province 300x225 - More than 50,000 properties in Malaga province have still not been made legalAssociations of owners of properties built on land which was not zoned for construction lost no time in expressing their criticism of the new regulations. They consider that these did not offer a practical and effective solution to the problems they were facing in trying to make their properties legal.

The situation has changed little, if at all, two years after the decree came into force. The councils, believe the regional authority should step forward; the owners of these properties are demanding a proper means of making their houses legal and they consider that what has been done so far is of no use whatsoever.

It is of no use, they say, because the best that 80 per cent of the owners of illegal properties can hope for is that their houses can be considered as Asimilado a Fuera de Ordenación (AFO), or outside of regulation; these are buildings which do not conform to the law and town planning regulations, cannot obtain an occupancy licence and against which no action can be taken because the period of time in which this could be done has expired.
...continue reading "More than 50,000 properties in Malaga province have still not been made legal"