Building abuse over 60 years old: easy amnesty arrives

Year zero of private building will be set at 1 September 1967. With the possibility of rapidly regularising abuses carried out before that date. This is just one of the novelties contained in the draft delegated law reforming the Consolidated Law on Construction, which has just been approved by the Council of Ministers. A novelty that immediately triggered controversy. Oppositions are shouting condemnation, while the Ministry of Infrastructure denies it. For his part, Vice-Premier Antonio Tajani explains in rather clear terms: 'This is about simplification. The things that are being remedied are pre-1960s, lower Palaeolithic stuff'.

The substance is that the government is continuing down the road already taken with the Salva casa decree: hence, amnesty for minor irregularities, which make it difficult to sell and renovate property. It is no coincidence, then, that the ministry speaks of allowing citizens to fully exercise their right to property. On the amnesty front, there will also be the overcoming of the many regional differences, as well as the setting aside of double conformity, which today makes regularisation more complex.

But in the text, eagerly awaited by businesses and professionals, there is not only talk of amnesties. There is the reorganisation of building permits, with the aim of clarifying how the various works must be authorised and when, instead, they fall under the free building regime, that is, without permits or communications. Today, many interventions suffer from considerable ambiguity. There will also be clarifications in matters related to town planning, to avoid cases like the one in Milan being replicated in the future.

There is also a focus on speeding up permits: extensive use will be made of silent consent and devolutionary silence, to avoid inertia on the part of the public administration and save citizens from the shackles of bureaucracy. On the digitalisation front, the databases in the hands of the public administration will be made interoperable and the building file will finally be implemented: it will contain the history of each building, summarising all the different interventions carried out over the years. That way, it will be easier to keep it under control.

It should be pointed out that the text is a draft enabling act. Therefore, it will have to pass through Parliament for approval. At that point there will be twelve months for the government to exercise the proxy by approving one or more decrees. In other words, operational measures will take at least a couple of years.