Key points of the new Balearic Urban Development Law

Illeslex Abogados, Law Firm specialized in Real Estate Law and Urban Planning Law  in Mallorca,  has closely followed the drafting of the New Urban Law of the Balearic Islands  approved on the 29th of December 2017. Law that was published on the same day  in the  BOIB/ Official Gazette of the Balearic  Islands  nr. 160 and that entered into force on  the 1st of  January. There are many novelties contemplated in the new 12/2017 Law  that abolishes  the 2/14 Law dated the 25th of March 2014  on  Planning and Use of the Land  of the Balearic Islands.

In the following, the most important key points:

• As a basic Law of compromise, the durability, since it gives maximum legal certainty.
• The definition of the basic regulatory lines of the three types of land, which includes rural land (which did not appear in the Land Law).
• The maximum facilitation of the general plans’ approval processes, with the breakdown of the general planning (in two parts) and a new processing system that will allow that the nearly 8-year current processing time becomes a 3-year process.
•  The territory’s sustainability, giving maximum priority to reuse urban land and to actions on “already build city", to avoid the occupation of new land.
• The fight against speculation, with the use of urban management instruments that guarantee maximum control of the processes, from the administrative and economic point of view, and corrective action that would prevent, for example, exaggerated gains, and to provide transparency in the process. It sets strict conditions for urban development agreements.
•  An effective urban discipline, both to ensure the enforcement of sanctions and the restoration of legality and of the physical reality which is altered when this is violated, as well as to act as a preventive and dissuasive element for irregular behaviours among individuals and public officials, by action or omission of these.
• More guarantees for specially protected land (Natural area of special interest (ANEI), Areas of Ecological and Landscape Interest (ARIP) and coastal territorial protection areas (APT)), giving exclusive competence to the councils and their agencies of urban discipline to act on these areas.
• Increase in the number of public housing. Provides administrations with effective instruments and sets obligations in urban planning in order to facilitate the increase of public housing to be used preferably for social rent.
• Prevent reclassification as urban land from settlements in rural areas and close the door to the amnesty of buildings outside of the ordination on rustic land.

Focusing on the measures adopted in relation to the Urban Development Law, we will extract the most important ones, which include two processes:

 The punitive, as also the restoration of legality and of the altered physical reality.

1.-  Sanctioning procedure: the penalties for illegal actions (without urban articles covering them) will be economic and the fines will vary.

For illegal works and installations in urban or developable land:

• Fines of between 50% and 70% of the value of the works performed if the use            of the land is permitted.
• Fines of between 75% and 100% of the value of the works if the use of the land          is not permitted.

For works and installations on rural land:

• Fine of up to 300% percent of the value of the works if the use of the land       is not permitted.       
• Fine of between 150% and 300% of the value of the works performed if the use of the land is permitted.

2.- Reset procedure/ execution of the demolitions: 

The deadline to start the procedure of restoration of altered physical reality will never be prescribed on rustic land: from now on the possible offender will know that any illegal work that is done in rustic land can be demolished by the Administration.
 
Executions of demolition orders, that are exempted from previous urban licenses, will be simplified: the project is presented and if the City Council doesn't say anything in a month, the term starts to execute them.

Other measures:

a) Continuing periodic penalty payments are foreseen: 10% of the value of the illegal works that will be repeated EACH MONTH (up to 12) until the offender carries out demolition and restoration.
 
b) The deadline for the subsidiary execution by the Administration expands to 15 years; the Law introduces it, according to jurisprudential criteria. The Administration can collaterally execute it from the time the deadline imposed on the offender expires.

c) To avoid the problem of proximity in the implementation of urban development discipline the Island Councils and agencies and supra-municipal consortia on rustic land, ANEI, ARIP and APT are given competence over them.

d) Responsibility of the authorities or public office: responsibilities for the authorities and public officials who, knowingly and with possibility of preventing it, allow the urban indiscipline, are set; for example, if they let records expire or fail to punish an infraction or ordering its reinstatement.

Javier Blas
Partner director | Illeslex Abogados

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