Building reform: technicians responsible (also criminally) for checking previous building titles

A new certification for technical professionals. To certify, under their own responsibility (including criminal responsibility), the correctness of the entire chain of building titles that has led to the current state of a property. This is the new, and already highly contested, requirement that could take shape with the reform of the Building Code.

Work on the text has already started: the head of the legislative department of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Elena Griglio, spoke about this on Wednesday at a conference organised at the Chamber of Deputies by the National Councils of Architects and Surveyors. The tight timescale will force the work of Parliament and Government on the dossier to proceed in parallel. Thus, on the one hand, MIT is already moving to define the delegated decrees. On the other, the Ddl is taking its first steps in Montecitorio, where it has been officially filed and will begin its examination in the Environment Committee after Easter.

In this context, in addition to a number of positive aspects related to the simplification of procedures and the settlement of the existing framework of rules, the first critical aspects are beginning to emerge. One of these is discussed by the president of the National Council of engineers, Domenico Perrini: 'The delegated law envisages that it is the professional who must asseverate past titles, with criminal liability as well. The issue concerns thelegitimate state of the property, that is, the full correspondence between its de facto state and the chain of building titles that, over the years, have affected it. Everything must have been, in other words, regularly authorised.

The full regularity of this chain, according to a passage in the enabling act, must be guaranteed by the professional who signs the last title. "This mechanism," says Perrini, "is unbalanced. We professionals have no problem taking responsibility for the technical aspects, but knowledge of the building history of a property is primarily the responsibility of the owner. The technician cannot be asked to guarantee the legitimacy of historical acts and measures over which he had no control.

Doubts also come, in this regard, from the national councillor of the geometers, Marco Vignali: "It is impossible to make a sworn declaration of the legitimate status considering the whole chain of building titles, when you cannot be sure that those titles are all those issued for a given building. The professional risks making an incorrect declaration, taking responsibility for any incompleteness of the documents. It should be, at the very least, the municipality that ensures the completeness of those titles'. It would be different, however, to envisage such a mechanism for the future: 'In this regard,' concludes the president of the Cni, Perrini, 'we have been insisting for years on the building file, and now there are increasingly simple and digital tools that allow us to reconstruct the history of buildings'.