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IurisConsulting Property Lawyers Occupation Permit |
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Occupation Permit
(earlier named Certificate of Habitability)
by Juan Bertomeu Vallés
Since Monday, the 3rd of January of 2005, is enforced a new Valencian law, aimed to order and encourage the Quality of the Building Process. The target is to delimit a single and clear legal frame for all the functions and tasks that have to do with the process of building, establishing a system for quality verification in all the phases of execution. Nevertheless, the most important aspects are those related to the planning or building permit and the license occupation permit (certificate of fitness for human habitation, untill now so called Cedula de Habitabilidad, and from now on, Licencia de Ocupación). The construction of a building, the execution of works of enhancement, reform or rehabilitation, and its occupation needs the procurement of the obligatory building permit and, when concluded, the occupation permit. This week we tackle about the occupation permit; next week we will analyze the relevant subject of building permit. The occupation permit is the act that recognizes and protects the aptitude for the use of the buildings, and its function is to verify the adequacy of the executed works to the project for wich the building permit was granted. For all the existing buildings, the occupation permit function is to verify the adequacy to the applicable rules, according to the use and characteristics of the buildings. The Supplier companies of electrical energy, water, gas, telecommunications, etc.., must demand for the hiring with the final users of the respective services, the occupation permit.
Exigency of the occupation permit The occupation permit must be procured once concluded the works. Passed ten years since the procurement of the first occupation permit, its renewal is necessary in the following cases:a. When it takes place second or later transfers of the property. b. When it is necessary to make a new contract of water, gas or electricity supply. In the cases of existing buildings that never had the occupation permit, is always necessary the procurement of the occupation permit. It is obligatory the procurement of the occupation permit (with independence of the time passed since the procurement of the previous one) whenever works of enlargement, modification, reform or rehabilitation are executed in existing buildings, which alter the architectural configuration (understanding for such those who have character of entire intervention, or the partial ones that produce an essential change of the general exterior composition, the volume, or changes the typical uses of the building) or works that have the character of entire intervention in listed buildings or that have some type of protection of environmental or historical-artistic character.
Procedure and terms For the procurement of the first occupation permit, the promoter must file an application to the town council, to whose effect must adjoin, necessarily, the certificate of reception of the work (document certifying that a building has been completed by the contractor and that the promoter concerned has taken formal possession) together with the architects certificate of works conclusion. To obtain subsequent occupation permits, the owners must apply for it to the town council, together with architect's certificate that the building fits to the conditions that supposed the granting of the first or previous occupation permit. There will be adjoined also copy of the corresponding Book of the Building. The verification of the fulfillment of the pertinent conditions for the granting of the occupation permit, in first or later occupations, will correspond to the municipal technical services. The term to grant the occupation permit is three months starting from the presentation of the application. The town councils will have an special registry where will be registered all the applications, authorizations and refusals of occupation permit, specifying in every case if they are of first or later occupations, and must inform the Valencian Government to statistical effects.
Administrative silencePassed the term of two month (plus, if applicable, that of the extension as consequence of suspension of the term for deciding when the Town Council request for repair of rectifiable errors), without being notified the applicant of the decision, is applicable the legal presumpion of positive administrative silence.
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