INFORMATION NOTE
DECREE-LAW 10/2024 OF 8 JANUARY
MAIN LEGISLATIVE CHANGES:
Legal Framework for Urban Development and Construction
General Regulations on Urban Buildings
Legal Framework for Urban Renewal
Legal Framework for Local Governments
Civil Code
“The administrative process becomes more developer-friendly”
Decree-Law 10/2024, which simplifies and reforms authorisations in the fields of urbanism, land use planning and industry, was approved on 8 January.
This reform has been greeted with some enthusiasm, as it is well known that the time taken to approve property projects and the bureaucracy involved significantly increases the price of property for the end user.
With this reform, the municipalities will lose some of their powers of ex ante control of urban planning operations and will instead take on a mere supervisory role.
The administrative process will thus be clearer, less bureaucratic and more modern – in short, more investor-friendly.
However, the changes that have now been approved will in many cases place the burden (perhaps too heavy a burden) on developers to ensure by their own means that the urban operations they are going to develop do not violate any legal or regulatory standards.
It remains to be seen whether municipalities will have time to adapt to these new responsibilities and the decision deadlines imposed by this law.
The following measures are now being advocated:
a) Elimination of the need to obtain town planning permission or prior notification, identifying new cases of exemption or dispensation from prior municipal control;
b) Eliminating the need to obtain some authorisations, creating new cases where only prior notification is required;
c) The adoption of a system of tacit approval for building permits, to which the system of certification of tacit approval applies, by means of the issue of a certificate obtained through an electronic procedure, as provided for by Legislative Decree No. 135/99 of 22 April 1999, as amended;
d) The abolition of the building permit, which will be replaced by a receipt for payment of the fees due;
e) The abolition of the authorisation of use in the case of works subject to prior control, replacing it with the mere submission of documents relating to the project, which cannot be approved or evaluated;
f) The adoption of a prior notice with a deadline of 20 days in the case of a change of use without work subject to prior control, the application for authorisation of use being deemed to have been accepted if the municipality does not respond within this period;
g) Establishing that favourable prior information issued following a request for prior information has a duration of two years, with the possibility of a one-year extension;
h) Flexibility in the conditions under which the request for a time limit for carrying out the works can be accepted, by removing the fact that it can only run once and the limit that the extension cannot be more than half of the original time limit;
i) Allow the delegation of powers to the heads of the municipal services in new situations, whether to grant building permits, thus avoiding the concentration of powers in the Town Hall, the Mayor or the Councillor responsible;
j) Adopt rules to make the counting of decision deadlines more transparent, through the following measures:
- Decision deadlines are counted from the date of the request by the interested party and not from any intermediate point in the procedure;
- Time limits are only suspended if the private party takes more than 10 days to respond to requests for information, additional documents or other requests from the public administration, so that if the public administration makes such requests, the decision time limits are not automatically suspended; and
- The public administration may only make one request for information, additional documents or other requests during the procedure;
k) Establish that in the absence of an outright rejection or a request to correct or complete the application or notice, the application or notice shall be deemed to have been properly instructed and the application cannot be rejected on the basis of incomplete instructions;
l) Determine that, in the case of requests for opinions, the procedure must be continued during the period between the request for an opinion, authorisation or consultation and its issue and the expiry of the relevant deadline;
m) Determine that an opinion from the competent heritage authority is not required for properties located in protection zones, for properties in the process of being classified, or for properties classified as being of national interest or public interest, when:
- Works inside the property, provided there is no impact on the subsoil, or alterations to tiling, stucco, stonework, joinery, carving or metalwork;
- External conservation works; and
- The construction of advertising hoardings, signs, awnings, terraces and street furniture;
n) The provision of an electronic platform for urban planning procedures, mandatory as of 5 January 2026, which will make it possible to submit applications online, check the status of procedures and deadlines, receive electronic notifications, obtain certificates of exemption from urban planning procedures, standardise procedures and documents required by municipalities, avoid the proliferation of different practices and procedures and, inter alia, allow for the future submission of applications in Building Information Modelling (BIM) format;
o) Clarifying that the local authority is only responsible for checking compliance with the provisions of municipal or inter-municipal land-use plans, preventive measures, priority urban development areas, priority building areas, administrative easements, public utility restrictions, the proposed use, the legal and regulatory provisions relating to the external appearance and urban and landscape integration of buildings and the sufficiency of infrastructure, and that it is not responsible for assessing issues relating to the interior of buildings or matters relating to special services (water, electricity, gas, etc.);
p) Make it clear that the Local Councils do not assess or approve special projects, which are merely sent for information and filing, accompanied by a statement of responsibility issued by the technicians responsible, certifying that the projects have been carried out in accordance with the law;
q) The repeal or replacement of certain requirements of the General Regulation for Urban Buildings (RGEU) that are considered restrictive and do not correspond to the protection of a current public interest, such as the obligation to have bidets in bathrooms, the possibility of having a shower in the bathroom instead of a bathtub, and the use of kitchen solutions such as kitchenettes or walk-in kitchens;
r) Repeal the RGEU with effect from 1 June 2026;
s) Indication that municipal regulations can only cover certain types of matters and cannot, for example, deal with matters relating to administrative procedures or instructional documents, thus seeking to make procedures more similar in the various municipalities of the country;
t) Elimination of excessive requirements for supporting documents to be submitted by interested parties when submitting applications for urban planning operations, such as digitalised building books or authenticated, recognised or certified powers of attorney;
u) Eliminate the need to obtain a specific permit to occupy public space, with the urban planning permit or prior notice becoming part of this permit, which is sometimes necessary for the work to be carried out, as it relates, for example, to the placement of rubbish bins or scaffolding on the public highway;
v) Removal of disproportionate and excessive requirements for letterboxes and the obligation for councils to check compliance;
w) Prohibit the requirement for police forces presence while work is in progress on the road;
x) The obligation for municipalities to accept the transfer to their contractual position of the guarantee given by the contractor to the developer for the urbanisation works, thus eliminating the cost of issuing new guarantees;
y) Simplification of the formalities related to the purchase and sale of property, by eliminating the need to present or prove the existence of the technical file of the house and the authorisation of use;
z) Simplification of the procedure for reclassifying rural land as urban land, for industrial, warehousing or logistics purposes or for subsidised housing;
aa) Streamlining the procedures for the approval of urbanisation plans and detailed plans by eliminating the need for the Regional Coordination and Development Commissions to oversee their preparation and by eliminating the consultation phase;
bb) Creating the conditions for a greater number of cases of exemption from urban control, i.e. eliminating the need to obtain licences or make prior notifications, by densifying the content of the execution units which, if they have certain characteristics, are now exempted from obtaining a licence or prior notification.