On Tuesday, April 23, the Cypriot Ministry of Interior, which oversees the urban planning process, announced its intention to implement an urban planning amnesty.
According to the ministry, this will make it easier to inspect houses, apartments, and villas with minor changes to the original plan that were not previously approved by the authorities. Property owners will pay fines for violations of the plan and then will be able to obtain ownership titles.
In particular, the amendments to the law will allow fines to be assessed not per square meter, but for each type of violation. At the same time, their effect will also apply to real estate that was built after 2018. Under minor violations are understood: awnings for protection from the sun, storage rooms, glazing of balconies and verandas and other minor deficiencies. It is worth noting that a different system of fines will apply to residential real estate and commercial real estate.
The ministry's initiative was commented on by the Cyprus Technical Chamber (ETEK).
The office said that it disagrees with the thoughtless legalization of major construction violations through urban amnesty, but does not object to the legalization of minor violations that do not affect safety.
As a general principle, we favor rewarding legality over illegality. This means that if there are arbitrary constructions, even on a small scale, that create safety problems, inconvenience adjacent buildings and public spaces or limit accessibility, they should be demolished rather than legalized," said ETEK head Konstantinos Konstantis.
In addition, Konstantis said that the question should be regulated in general by modernizing the urban planning legislation, where the types of different structures should be divided according to their area and materials, to reduce the phenomena of arbitrariness.
In any case, before taking any decision, it is necessary to identify, analyze and fix the problem. It is equally important to involve experts in this process so that we can be sure that structures and their materials are safe and human lives are not put at risk in the event of severe weather events or earthquakes," emphasized the head of ETEK.
Finally, he recalled that there are currently about 20 thousand real estate titles hanging in the air, most of which are difficult or impossible to issue due to serious violations of urban planning.