GOOD NEWS FOR INVESTORS; Lisbon Chamber simplifies and strengthens supervision in urban licensing!

The municipality will strengthen over the next few months, to about double, the number of engineers assigned to the supervision of urban licensing.

The Lisbon City Council has simplified the urban licensing process and will strengthen, to about double, the number of engineers and architects assigned to supervision, in order to allow faster responses to citizens and businesses.

Speaking to Lusa agency, the councilman of Urbanism of the City of Lisbon, Ricardo Velvet (Citizens for Lisbon, elected by the PS), explained that the municipality now makes a "purely formal control of specialties", that is, to check essentially documentation and the terms of responsibility of the authors of the projects, instead of carrying out the "verification of the content and compliance with technical rules and their compatibility with the previously approved architectural project".

This control, "which was done before, is now done later", so the chamber will reinforce over the next few months, to about double, the number of engineers assigned to the supervision of urban licensing, increasing the accountability of project authors, coordinators and construction owners.

The Lisbon municipality also created mission teams, with a reinforcement of about 70 workers, to "end the pending processes" in the phases of specialties and occupation of the public road, as well as to "eliminate the processes that, having already been approved, the companies did not take advantage of them", said Councilman Ricardo Velvet.

For the time being, it is not planned to hire new workers, and this is a process of internal readjustment. Still, the head of the urbanism department in the capital admitted to "coming to hire people" in the future, if necessary.

"These measures are in line with the latest changes to the Legal Regime for Urbanization and Building, which provide that the prior control of the projects of specialties is merely formal and that any irregularities found in the inspection phase give rise to the participation of these facts to associations and professional orders and judicial authorities", says the municipality, in a note sent to Lusa.

The same note reinforces that "for this reason, the simplification of prior control must be accompanied by an effective strengthening of the capacity for successive supervision of projects and works".

"We are aware of the positive impact that the efficiency and speed of our activity have on supporting the real estate and construction sector, whose economic and social relevance is strategic for the city of Lisbon. For this reason, and especially in the context in which we live, we have implemented a set of measures that will allow us to resolve the pending licensing in the phase of specialties and occupation of public roads and, at the same time, create conditions to maintain this speed in the future", argues Ricardo Veludo, quoted in the statement.

The mayor states that Portuguese architects and engineers "are deserving of the trust of public authorities with regard to the quality of projects and regulatory standards".

"That is why the law determines that the terms of responsibility of project authors and project coordinators are a guarantee of compliance with applicable legal and regulatory standards, thus excluding their prior assessment," Ricardo Veludo said in the same note.

The municipality also points out that these measures aim to complement the process of digitization of urban processes, which is being carried out by the chamber, with the aim of "strengthening the commitment of the municipality to greater speed and efficiency in the processing of processes".

SOURCE: LUSA