Canary Islands speed up issue of planning permission

The Canary Islands Government has published a new law to speed up the granting of planning permission in its official gazette. The notice appeared on Friday and is intended to boost housing construction on the islands. The Canary Islands Government hopes that the increase in new homes will have a positive effect on rent prices.

According to figures from the Canary Islands Statistical Office (ISTAC), the authorities in the Canary Islands granted 287 planning permissions for flats in February. This represented a fall of 42.1 per cent compared with the same month last year. Planning permission is always the first step in any building project, so it is regarded as a good indicator of actual construction activity in a region.

The refurbishment of the port of Puerto de la Cruz illustrates just how protracted procedures can be, for example in Tenerife. A report by the Ministry in February highlighted difficulties with the environmental impact assessment certificate, which is mandatory in the Canary Islands. The project has been under discussion for decades and has so far consistently failed following every new attempt. A new approach to planning permission is now intended to at least streamline procedures and prevent further delays. But there is a long backlog.

Fewer completed flats in the Canary Islands

In March, the Office for Statistics recorded 182 completed flats in the Canary Islands, 5.7 per cent fewer than a year earlier. The decline was therefore significantly less pronounced than that seen in the number of planning permissions. However, the impact of these permissions is only felt months or years later, as completed flats are based on applications submitted in previous years.

Most recently, the Canary Islands government has intervened on several occasions in ongoing proceedings in order to push projects forward. For the final section of the island ring road, it ordered the urgent expropriation of several plots of land on Tenerife. In the south of Tenerife, one of the largest ever construction projects for private and social housing is also set to be built.

In order to ensure these projects are taken forward reliably, policymakers are now taking action at the administrative level and setting out the conditions necessary to process planning applications much more quickly in future.