The urban planning councilors of the Braga, Porto and Vila Real councils highlighted today that the main changes evident in the housing ‘simplex’ ended up overloading technicians with work and responsibility, asking for incorrect standards to be corrected.
At a conference organized today at the Porto Business School, in Matosinhos, by the orders of Architects and Engineers, the councilor for urban planning at Braga City Council, João Rodrigues, stated that “those who are currently on the chopping block are not the municipal councils. , it is the technicians who assume responsibility in this matter”.
“In fact, here there was a kind of – I’m not saying absolute, but almost absolute – transmission of the burden of responsibility for practically everything that has been done to the technicians”, pointed out the head of Braga’s municipal executive.
Admitting that he even welcomes “the transmission of some of this responsibility”, he considered that “everything was done in a very clumsy and very quick way, without a period that was more than deserved, more than necessary, so that the Chambers Municipal authorities and technicians could adapt.”
His counterpart from Porto, Pedro Baganha, also stated that the law, in essence, “will increase the risk” for designers, promoters and financing entities.
“In my book, when the risk increases, the risk premium increases. The cost increases. Therefore, this is the first criticism I make: a law that was supposed to serve to lower the price of housing, from my point of view will serve to increase the price of construction”, he considered.
For Pedro Baganha, another risk is that citizens “will be able to buy properties, dwellings and whatever else without a use license, without a paper from a licensing entity that certifies that what they are buying is legal”.
However, he safeguarded that the responsibilities of the municipal councils “have not changed”, and considered that it is “conceptually justified that there is a relaxation of prior control when urban parameters are predetermined”.
“But that is precisely the genesis of the licensing problem in Portugal: we started at the end. Why is it faster to license in countries like the United Kingdom, Denmark or Sweden? Because they have the entire territory planned”, which does not happen in Portugal, where there is “an extremely weak planning culture”.
Pedro Baganha also anticipated that in local authorities “the number of processes will increase”, since “each rejection will give rise to a new process”, as well as an increase in Requests for Prior Information (PIP), which are a way of local authorities officially validate projects, with documentation that can be transmitted to promoters or financiers.
The councilor also said that the law meant that he could delegate “practically everything”, increasing “the risk of the administrative structure of the municipal council, particularly its leaders”.
“It can help to defend municipalities from tacit approval deadlines, because I am not available to carry out the act, someone does it for me, but the technical structure of the municipality sees its responsibility increased”, he said, fearing that, in cases of doubt regarding the projects, the city administration chooses to reject projects, from a defensive positioning perspective.
Adriano Sousa, councilor of the Vila Real City Council, highlighted that the urban ‘simplex’ has the “problem of being a diploma with retroactive effects”, and an applicant with a process already in progress must adapt it to the new law.
“If there are heroes in this whole process, they are the municipal technicians: architects, engineers and I would add jurists”, he pointed out, adding that he has not yet published his municipal regulations because “it is impossible” within the requested deadlines.
The Vila Real manager also highlighted the importance of creating a standardized platform at national level for submitting projects.
