Cultural Heritage

Superintendencies decree, legislation without analysis of criticalities and impacts

The aim is to facilitate authorisation procedures for interventions in areas subject to landscape constraints, but there is a lack of studies on the merits

by Margherita Ceci

13 May 2025

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First the proposal - rejected - of a amendment to the Dl Cultura, which caused doubts among the majority and the stop of Minister Alessandro Giuli himself; then an ad hoc bill, the text of which, however, seems to have some gaps in the drafting.

The Superintendence bill (A.S. 1372), presented by the League and under consideration by the Culture and Environment committees in the Senate, is causing debate among the many operators involved. The aim of the proposal, to bureaucratise and simplify the landscape authorisation procedures, is clear and has been wanted for some time. Yet, the hearings held in the last month in Palazzo Madama have brought to light the lack of a preliminary examination of the cases and criticalities that occur in the exercise of protection.

What the standard requires

The draft law sets a 45-day deadline for the Superintendencies to pronounce on the intervention; once this period has passed, the competent local administration interprets the silenzio-assenso and proceeds with the application, either for ordinary authorisation or for amnesty. That is not all: the opinion rendered by the superintendent is transformed from binding to mandatory non-binding in the case of the opening of roads and quarries, piling or laying of pipelines for industrial and civil plants in and near areas subject to constraints.

A delegation of authority to the government is then outlined for the elimination of the restriction in the case of building interventions subject to Cila and Scia (in the latter case, only if the increase in volume does not exceed 20%), or in cases where the modifications respect the character of the building. Delegation of authority to the Government also for the revision of the Code of Cultural Heritage, which will include slight interventions among those not subject to the opinion of the Superintendence (but only to that of the local authority) and will remove the constraint of authorisation for those relating to the internal parts of buildings whose façade is bound.

Critical issues

Among the debate of the operators, who are generally in favour of the simplification of the regulations - although with different orientations: those from the construction sector are more enthusiastic about the text, those from the protection and conservation sector are more critical - the lack of an analysis of the impact of the proposed regulation emerges, however, as well as a careful examination of the administrative problems. No aggregate data (or disaggregated by individual superintendencies) were acquired on the number of applications for authorisation submitted in a year, how many positive or negative opinions are issued, the average processing time of applications, or the workload of the staff in charge.

Assigning more landscape responsibilities to local authorities would also risk burdening the administrative structure, which already lacks adequate technical and professional resources. "Approximately 70% of Italian municipalities," explains the Italian Historic Residences Association, "have less than 5,000 inhabitants and have reduced technical-administrative structures that are called upon to cover extremely heterogeneous areas, without the possibility of acquiring specialist training for each subject and often inadequate to manage complex and highly specialised procedures.

The introduction of silence-consent, moreover, a practice already regulated by Article 17-bis of Law 241/1990, would only serve to clarify an applicative uncertainty, effectively burdening the regulatory apparatus: "The issue has been addressed by the Senate's Study Service, taking into account administrative jurisprudence only up to 2022," explained Alberto Roccella, professor of Urban Planning Law at the University of Milan, "but the most recent one already admits the formation of horizontal silence-assent in the case of inertia on the part of the Superintendent. It would therefore be a purely reconnaissance provision of an established jurisprudential direction'.

The same thing happens with the provision excluding landscape authorisation for works on the internal parts of buildings whose façade is bound. "The provision appears unnecessary," Roccella continues, "because Annex A to Presidential Decree 31/2017 already includes internal works that do not alter the external appearance of buildings among the interventions excluded from the landscape authorisation.

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