The licensing of urban planning permits is in crisis because these permissions, which should normally be ready within two months, are accumulating delays that sometimes stretch beyond two years. In response to this situation, experts who participated this Monday in a session organized by the Alicante Provincial Council on Urban Law in the Valencian Community, held at ADDA, urged updates to both regional and national legislation to address the problem. Beyond changing rules, attendees asked for greater efficiency within the civil service and lamented staff shortages facing many town halls in the province. As an example, Alicante has only one technician for every 57,000 residents to carry out these duties.
The debate was moderated by Alicia Hernandis, head of the provincial council’s service, and the first to speak was Antonio Verdú, director of the municipal assistance area. The speaker opened by describing the challenges in license management faced by municipalities, especially smaller ones, and noted that the legal deadlines for granting licenses, which should be two months, are extended to years in some cases, prompting him to call for changes to regional and national laws to create mechanisms that end the administrative pathology.
Deadlines
[–>
Verdú noted that one of the most frequent problems is that technicians delay their reports and miss deadlines, sometimes taking up to five months to present them. The provincial representative proposed additional measures to end the licensing crisis, such as productivity-based pay for civil servants to incentivize performance. He also suggested that the initiation of construction be simplified through responsible declarations. Some proposed solutions clash with regional or state law, which is why participants urged updating the current regulations.
The meeting included the participation of representatives from the Alicante and Orihuela councils. For the capital, Leticia Martín, director of the municipal office of the PGOU, spoke. The only woman among the speakers drew attention to the fine line between what is technical and what is legal in these processes and advocated for multidisciplinary teams within municipalities to initiate licenses with greater guarantees and to improve decision making.
The Torrevieja City Council was represented by Fernando Domínguez, who began by lamenting that the license for a single-family home can take more than four months and that projects for the construction of several homes can be delayed by up to two years. Like several speakers, Domínguez pointed to staff shortages as a major cause and added internal organizational problems in town halls, with departments operating in silos that fail to collaborate and with limited flexibility to move personnel according to needs.
Collaboration
[–>
In light of this scenario, the Torrevieja representative called for a stronger culture of collaboration and mobility of staff, as well as uniform training to prevent contradictory reports from different municipalities. Domíez urged that training for civil servants and private technicians focus on creating streamlined models and simplified management approaches to licensing.
The discussion concluded with the interventions of two presidents of Alicante’s professional bodies, the College of Architects Emilio Vicedo and the College of Building Engineers and Technical Architects Carlos Casas. Vicedo centered his remarks on the role of Urban Collaborative Entities (ECUV) and, alongside sharing his experience with licensing, defended the contribution architects bring through practical know-how and close ties to the territory.
[–>
The final speaker, Casas, addressed the perspective of a technical architect. He argued that in larger cities such as Alicante, Torrevieja, and Denia, licensing timelines lengthen due to staff shortages in municipal offices, a factor that aggravates the housing problem as delays also raise project costs.