Balearic Islands prepares an urban moratorium to limit construction on rustic land
Palma de Mallorca
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The Balearic Government's Ministry of the Environment, which is headed by the MÉS per Mallorca eco-sovereignist Miquel Mir, has prepared in recent months the preliminary draft of a decree law on "Urgent measures to protect the territory", which among its main initiatives plans to establish an urban moratorium until December 31, 2021 to limit the construction of houses on rustic land throughout the Archipelago.
In the Balearic Islands, the urban regulation It is essentially set by the island councils of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera, as well as the consistories of large municipalities, as in the case of the Palma City Council. In this context, with its decree law the Government plans to give these institutions a period of one and a half years to update their respective urban regulations for better protection of the Balearic territory.
During that eighteen month time period, the licensing Construction on rustic land will be extremely restricted. Once the moratorium now planned is over, the Balearic Government will make urban planning decisions for the protection of the territory in the event that they have not been previously taken by the other island institutions.
The draft of the aforementioned future decree law is now being analyzed by the three formations that make up the Executive that presides over the socialist Francina Armengol, which are the PSOE, Unidas Podemos and MÉS per Mallorca, since there are some discrepancies about the content of your articles. In this sense, the text currently drafted could still undergo some modifications before it is approved at a next Governing Council. Such approval would already take place in the coming weeks.
Main proposals
In the preamble of the preliminary draft of the decree law it is stated that its objective is "increase protection of rustic soil of the Balearic Islands, contain the urban development of this land not adapted to the limitations established in the current territorial planning instruments, introduce landscape and environmental integration measures related to the recovery and conservation of rustic farms, as well as establish saving measures of water".
On the one hand, the purpose of the Govern is "Contain expansionary growth" of new developments and "strengthen protection" of rustic land. In this sense, the decree-law acts on the urbanizable land with «the intention of arranging its reclassification as rustic land». Therefore, land that is "in a basic situation of rural land would be reclassified because they have not even started the process of urban transformation." On the other hand, "the prohibitions on building single-family homes in areas of rustic land where the prohibition seems clearly justified, such as the Risk Prevention Areas" would be expanded.
In any case, the future decree law « will not apply to building land or suitable for urbanization thus classified by general planning instruments »that at the time of the entry into force of the new autonomous rule« are processing their adaptation to the determinations related to urbanizable land by the corresponding Insular Territorial Plan and the growth limitations established by the Territorial Planning Guidelines ».
Likewise, they will also be left out of the new decree provided by the regional government "applications for urban planning permission to build on rustic land that have the full documentation».
