(Finance) – Il decree on the Housing Plancurrently under review at House Environment and Public Works Committeereceived afavorable reception by theNational Association of Italian Municipalities (Anci) and of theNational Association of Builders (ANCE)but both organizations underlined the need to make some amendments to improve the text.
“The structure of the decree on the Housing Plan is good, but amendments are needed to improve the text, particularly on sanctioning regime and on the maintenance of municipal planning instruments regarding limitations on changes of use”. This is the position of theAnciwhich is examining the measure.
“In general, and in support of an improvement of the provision during conversion, it is necessary to introduce corrective measures aimed at greater coordination of the new discipline, especially with regard to the new sanctioning regime. Need – explains the ANCI on its website – linked to eliminate the so-called double conformity. We then need a realignment with the cultural heritage code to avoid distorting effects that are contrary to the ratio legis of some new rules introduced by the same provision”.
On the changes in intended use, the Anci observed that “corrective measures are needed that safeguard the power/duty of municipal planning instruments to dictate, with justification, ‘limitations’, and not just mere ‘conditions’, to changes in the intended use of properties, with or without works”. The Anci representatives also underlined the need to “work towards a new forms which is all the more necessary since the decree is already in force and the municipal offices are in great difficulty compared to the forms used so far”. For the ANCI, which presented a detailed document to the commission, it is also necessary to intervene on the topic of interventions of building renovation and more generally of the definitions of building interventions referred to in art. 3 of Presidential Decree 380/01 which have undergone a doctrinal and jurisprudential evolution in recent decades which requires regulatory clarity.
Positive evaluation also for Ance which, for its part, asks for one overall review of building and urban planning regulationsconsidering it a priority pay more attention to the rules on changes in use. Below are the detailed positions of the two associations.
Ance, considers the decree an intervention “by common sense to create the conditions for the start of extensive processes of adaptation of the existing building stock to the new technical, technological and ultimately livability standards”. Also because “without the resolution of the issues relating to the small discrepancies there would be a risk of effectively blocking the adaptation operations also necessary for the implementation of the Energy Performance Directive”.
However, during the hearing in the Environment and Public Works Commission of the Chamber which is examining the decree, the National Association of Building Builders underlined the need to arrive at an overall review of the building and urban planning regulations whose rules are now too dated. Regarding the measures of the decree, ANCE considers it “a priority to pay greater attention to rules on changes in use“. Specifically “it is believed that the possibility that the facilitative rules of the decree are also extended to changes with works should be further evaluated, since in the processes of changes of use it is not the building intervention itself that influences (whose possibilities are expressly permitted by the urban planning plans), as well as the relative function and, therefore, the new use that is assumed within the single real estate unit”.
Since the decree it intervenes on individual “property units” and not on “entire” properties, it would be appropriate, according to ANCE, to always allow the change of use when the transition occurs between homogeneous categories without any type of condition (for example from residence to professional office and vice versa). On the other hand, many regional laws have already provided for these operations by classifying the intended uses as homogeneous and allowing these steps.
ANCE also asks to “eliminate the obligation that the change is aimed at the form of use of the real estate unit ‘conforms to that which prevails in the other real estate units present in the property’. This is because the principle of ‘prevalence’, concludes the Association, would in fact lead to the areas of our neighborhoods being even more narrowed down with the risk of a ‘mono-functionality’. ‘ with respect to the necessary ‘functional mixitè’. As for the ‘tolerances, ANCE agrees with the remediable percentage increases and considers it necessary to “eliminate the time limit introduced” (24 May 2024) in order to bring the tolerances back to their purpose of construction errors and extend them application to minor discrepancies where the legitimate expectations of private individuals are certain.
(Photo: Gerd Altmann / Pixabay)