Building reform, stop the Babel of regions on abuses

To establish single criteria at a national level to identify discrepancies and building abuse. In order to put an end to regional differences, which have recently created problems for the application of the Save Home Decree. If today, in fact, each region independently indicates the criteria for cataloguing discrepancies, this will no longer be the case in the future. This is the aim of the delegated bill for reform of the Consolidated Building Law, now close to being approved by the Council of Ministers, as confirmed by both Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and the head of the Infrastructure Department, Elena Griglio.

The text, which is now ready, deals with various topics, all of which are related to both a revision of Presidential Decree 380/2001 and an update of the urban planning matter, on which there has been no organic intervention for decades. Among the various topics, however, an overall reform of the system of offences and sanatoria mechanisms stands out in several passages, together with a review of the competences of the State and the Regions. On the first front, for example, the aim is to encourage the regularisation of abuses committed before Law No. 765/1967: this would become a sort of year zero for building construction. At the same time, it would be made clear that the amnesty of abuses and non-conformities also shelters tax benefits. On the regional competences front, the clear intention is to define the boundaries of the governors' action much more precisely.

One of the most slippery points, in the field of construction, is precisely related to amnesties and discrepancies between what is authorised by the municipality and what is realised on site. In this sector, for example, it happens that the limit of partial non-conformities (those that can be sanctioned most easily) differs from one region to another. Each region, in fact, independently establishes the definition of essential variations, at which point a small non-conformity becomes more relevant. The definition of abuse, in short, is coloured differently in the different territories.

These differences create operational problems. Thus the government aims to give clearer guidelines at a national level. In fact, among the delegation criteria, the decree explains that it will be necessary to 'define at a national level a common classification of the types of non-conformity with the building permit', so as to identify 'unambiguous standards for the classification of pathological situations'. In addition, it will be necessary to 'define in a clear and exhaustive manner each type of building non-conformity, with the intention of preventing interpretative uncertainties in the application of the relative definitions'.

But, to give a precise boundary to the interventions of theRegions, the government's idea is to go even further. Identifying upstream which are the non-derogable state provisions, on which the regions cannot pronounce, and which are the essential levels of services, which cannot be derogated at the local level. These also include the standard types, at the national level, of building violations and the identification of standards for obtaining building permits in amnesty.