Property owners who wish to regularise their non-sanctionable property in the coming 12 months will not be charged a surcharge of 25%, as is prescribed in Legal Notice 285/16, the Planning Authority said Friday.

“Following the overwhelming response in applications received over the past two years, the Planning Authority decided to retain the applicable rate for a further year, giving owners the chance to benefit from this one-time opportunity. The legal notice has been amended to reflect this change.”

Back in August 2016, the Authority launched the regularisation scheme with the prime purpose of facilitating the sale of properties which were idle on the market due to irregularities that were not sanctionable. Regularisation can only be considered if a property is located entirely within the development boundaries and appears in the Authority’s aerial photos of 2016 – nothing after. The illegality cannot be creating an injury to amenity and the use of the building must be according to current policies.

If one of these conditions cannot be satisfied, then the scheme cannot be applied. The applicable fee is calculated on the total and combined roofed over area of each floor of the property being regularised. 

The majority of the monies collected from this scheme, up to 70%, are utilised for Community schemes such as the Irrestawra Darek grant scheme. 20% is allocated towards the Development Planning Fund, to be utilised by localities in community improvement projects.

The Planning Authority said that over the past two years it has received over 10,000 submissions from owners who wish to regularise their non-sanctionable property.

Of these, 8,155 submissions got validated resulting in over €15.7 million revenue through this scheme alone.