Salva casa, Sardinia's transposition rejected

Stop the regional law of Sardinia (law no. 18/2025) that implemented, with various modifications, the Salva casa. In this matter, the State has a leading role, setting limits that the regions cannot cross. The Constitutional Court, in its sentence 86/2025, struck out many passages of that rule. With one surprise, however: the politically most contested passage (the one on derogations on the subject of mini-dwellings) remained intact, because the appeal was declared inadmissible.

That said, the first stop concerns the definition of restructuring. "The Sardinian regional legislator," says the ruling, "generically brings back into the notion of renovation any volumetric enlargement, on the sole condition that it takes place within the outline. That is, if it is carried out within the outline it is possible to increase the volume, even in the absence of a building permit. The problem is that, according to the judges, this contrasts with the national regulations, which, on the other hand, expressly set limits for increases in volume. "On the basis of the foregoing, the contested regional regulation, by automatically including among restructuring interventions those that preserve the outline but determine an increase in volume, is not consistent with the aforementioned state regulation," explained the Consulta.

Another important step concerns changes of intended use. On this point, the Salva casa introduced a series of important simplifications. Simplifications that, in part, have not been implemented by Sardinia, which has maintained the obligation of minimum allocation of parking spaces also for urbanistically irrelevant changes of use within the same functional category. This provision was annulled. The national law is a 'fundamental norm of economic and social reform', which operates 'as a general limit to the exercise of primary legislative power'.

Again, the rules on the total and partial non-conformity of building interventions were cancelled, declaring illegitimate the definitions based on rigid quantitative thresholds. With regard to amnesties, it was declared unlawful to allow, in order to obtain an amnesty, corrective interventions that are not provided for by state regulations. And the constitutional illegitimacy of the provisions permitting generalised derogations from the hygienic-sanitary aero-illumination requirements established by the ministerial decree of 5 July 1975 was declared illegitimate, for violation of Article 32 of the Constitution.

Against this backdrop, the most contested rule of Sardinia's package of rules was surprisingly saved. A paragraph of the law, in fact, provides for the disapplication of the passages of the Salva casa that make an exception to the criteria of agibility of buildings. Basically, it says that the qualified designer is authorised to asseverate the project's compliance with health and hygiene standards in the case of locations with a minimum internal height less than 2.70 metres, up to a maximum limit of 2.40 metres, and "of one-room dwellings with a minimum area, including services, of less than 28 square metres, up to a maximum limit of 20 square metres, for one person, and less than 38 square metres, up to a maximum limit of 28 square metres, for two persons. On mini-dwellings, however, the appeal was declared inadmissible.