Most of the measures in Salvini’s Save-home plan do not apply in Sicily. A good 9 out of 12 articles of the text that introduces mini amnesties and loosens building restrictions must be explicitly accepted by the Region: a law will therefore be needed by the ARS. And in the meantime, the Municipalities and professionals must remain firm: any requests from private individuals will be rejected.
At the Department of Territory, they X-rayed the national law on construction approved between May and July. This is thanks to the fact that the new councilor Giusi Savarino is an expert on the subject, having been the rapporteur in 2016 of the law with which the ARS dictated its own rules in the same matters on which the Minister of Infrastructure has now intervened. And precisely those Sicilian rules still have precedence and remain more restrictive than the national ones.
Therefore, all the facilities on so-called free construction introduced in other regions are no longer available on the Island: this is the case for panoramic windows, awnings, pergolas and similar structures.
Amnesty for buildings constructed in non-compliance (even partial) with building permits is also not applicable in Sicily. And these are the most significant measures that have remained excluded on the Island.
Nor are the rules that now from Reggio onwards allow the regularization of properties built in compliance with regulations other than those in force applicable in Sicily. This is called “double conformity”. Salvini has ruled out that properties must comply with both the laws of the time they were built and the current ones: it is sufficient that they are in compliance now (taking advantage of the changes in regulations that have occurred over time). In Sicily, however, the obligation of double conformity remains.
And even for the recovery of attics nothing can be done, for the moment, in Sicily because the Region had dictated its own discipline that Salvini’s plan cannot overcome.
The same goes for sanctions: the new national rules change the amounts to be paid in case of abuse and amnesty, sometimes making them less onerous.
But in Sicily the old figures remain because they are explicitly provided for by the regional law.
The President of the Sicilian Region intervenes to clarify the issue Renato Schifani: “At the first available meeting the regional government will approve a bill to implement the Urgent Provisions on building and urban planning simplification, which we will immediately send to the ARS to start the parliamentary process. Sicily has exclusive legislative power in matters of urban planning and, in general, of territorial government. A regional law is therefore necessary to make the recent national law fully applicable, which we will do quickly”.
The national law has only some points of the article that are immediately applicable on the Sicilian territory and others that require a transposition law. For this reason, the regional councilor for Territory and Environment Giusi Savarino has issued a circular (available on the Region’s portal at this link) which highlights which aspects of the law are immediately in force in Sicily and which, instead, cannot be directly applied.
“This circularpublished with the promptness that the case requires, has the aim of simplifying the work carried out by local authorities and professionals in the sector – adds the councillor Savarino – On the one hand, it anticipates the fundamental contents of the bill that will be proposed to the Regional Assembly, on the other It constitutes a valid application and interpretative handbook, useful in the practice of operators in the sector. In fact, in terms of transposition, we distinguish between those rules which, by virtue of a dynamic reference to national legislation, find immediate application on Sicilian soil, from those, vice versa, which require adequate transposition”.
In detail, the immediately applicable rules in Sicily are the one that derogates from the limits of distance between buildings, the one on “administrative documentation and legitimate status of the properties”, on “significant change of urban use” and on “interventions carried out in the absence of a building permit, in total non-compliance or with essential variations”, the one on construction tolerances and, finally, the one on “interventions carried out in the absence or in non-compliance with the certified notification of commencement of activity”.
All the rest of the national plan must be implemented with a regional law.
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