“What the Canary Coalition is asking for is that those who have committed urban infractions, instead of requiring them to legalize or demolish, they also impose a fine. We are talking about more than 2,000 citizens of La Laguna”, said the Councilor for Territory Planning, Santiago Pérez, at the request of the nationalists to hold an extraordinary plenary session to address the opening of two sanctioning files against the mayor of the city, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, and the President of Parliament, Gustavo Matos, for illegal works in their homes. The request of that plenary session was CC’s response to the publication in Canary Islands Now of the news that the general secretary of that formation and the next candidate for the presidency of the Government, Fernando Clavijo, he has also carried out illegal works in his house of the lagoon historic center.
Clavijo stands up to the Urban Planning technicians who wanted to inspect the illegal works of his house
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Santiago Pérez has warned in a press conference that “the general secretary of the plenary session says in a report that a plenary agreement cannot be requested that refers only to two citizens, because these infractions have not been committed in the exercise of their position. public”. In addition, “if the Plenary agreed to open a sanctioning file against only two people, says the secretary, it would be infringing article 14 of the Constitution, which establishes equality before the law. And if someone were to vote for that in plenary, let them assume the legal responsibilities of approving an agreement against the Constitution and against a fundamental right”, the senator also indicated, “because the plenary session of the City Council is intended to control the action of the rulers in the exercise of government functions, not their activity as citizens”.
Pérez recalled that in September 2020 an internal instruction was approved “to establish priorities in terms of urban discipline, which is what the Government must do in its role as director of the Public Administration”. That priority was to “devote the greatest effort to control the great urban infraction” and to this “the greatest resources are dedicated”, in the face of small infractions that “have no territorial significance, do not invade agricultural land, do not invade the maritime-terrestrial public domain, nor its easement areas”.
“The instruction does not establish at any time that a sanctioning file is not opened”, Santiago Pérez clarified. “At no time is the opening of sanctioning files excluded, but priorities are established and the priority of this Government is to defend the territory and that means stopping urban discipline so that it is not consolidated and becomes irreversible.”
Improvement in processing times
In a statement issued this Friday, Santiago Pérez has detailed that during the period 2015 and 2019, the Urban Planning Management processed and resolved 175 files on restoration, compared to 230 files so far in office, which represents 31 % more, “still missing eight months to end this period of municipal government.”
These files were processed in an average time of 489 days, compared to the current 260 (which represents a reduction of 46%). “This means that the protection of the territory is proving to be much more efficient and this is what the citizens demand from a municipal government in terms of protecting the legality of the territory,” said Santiago Pérez.
Along the same lines, with respect to conservation files, up to 154 were resolved in the previous mandate, compared to 245 files in the current one, which is 58% more. These files were processed in an average time of 613 days, compared to the current 283 days (a reduction of 53%). If the time elapsed since the last organizational changes is considered, the average has already dropped to 133 days.
In addition, Santiago Pérez recalled that the Urban Planning Department has processed and granted in the last year “more than 600 urban planning licenses compared to that of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, which has granted just over 400”. We are talking about your data.
The average time for processing urban planning licenses has also been reduced considerably compared to the previous mandate, going from an average time of 82 days to an average of 40 days in the last quarter.
