Alcaucín begins drafting a new town planning scheme

The proposal, No. 1175/2023, was approved by the full council meeting on 2 September with nine votes in favour, none against and one abstention. The town hall agreed to approve both the procurement dossier and the administrative and technical specifications, and to initially authorise expenditure of 10,588 euros for the 2026 financial year.

The town hall has described the progress made on the project on its social media as "great news’" In its message, it states that the mayor’s office and the executive team had been “setting aside funds from the PAEM for several years” in order to drive forward the new planning initiative. I

The contractual documentation, to which SUR has had access, sets out exactly how the project will be funded: the tender specifications set out the municipal budget allocation and distribute the expenditure between 2026 and 2031. The file sets out 10,588 euros for this year; 42,350 per year between 2027 and 2030 and a further 31,763 for 2031.

The plan that Alcaucín now wishes to draw up is not exactly the same as the old General Urban Development Plan on which the council has been working for years. The Law on Promoting the Sustainability of the Territory of Andalusia (LISTA) allows municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants that are neither coastal nor part of certain urban agglomerations to replace the General Plan and the Urban Development Plan with a PBOM. This instrument sets out the general framework for the municipality and the detailed planning of urban land.

The tender specifications allocate 22 months for the actual drafting of the documents and set aside the remainder for municipal processing, public consultation periods, public participation and the procurement of the various sectoral and environmental reports. The procedure is structured in eight phases, from the initial work programme to the submission of the final version of the plan.

Community participation will play a specific role during the drafting of the document. The tender specifications require the drafting of a citizen participation plan, the organisation of public meetings and the facilitation of direct involvement by local residents. They also stipulate that the town hall must publish the content of the plan at each stage on its website and that the contracted team must draw up reports incorporating the suggestions and contributions received.

The town hall has stated in this regard that, once the contract has been awarded, meetings will be held with residents affected by the various project units. The technical documentation expands on this approach and sets out a participatory process during the various stages of development, in addition to the mandatory periods for public consultation and the submission of comments prior to final approval.

Outsourcing is also a response to the council’s limited technical capacity to undertake work of this complexity using its own resources. On 3 August, the municipal secretary-auditor confirmed that the council ‘does not have the necessary technical and professional resources’ to draft the new instrument. The council resolution adds that a multidisciplinary team is required and that the municipal workforce lacks the sufficient human and material resources to carry out all the necessary studies, designs and calculations.

The new document also applies to a municipality whose master plan dates back to 1995 and were subsequently partially adapted to Andalusian town planning legislation in 2009. A consolidated text was approved in 2010. In 2013, the council also gave the green light to a preliminary study to identify and demarcate existing settlements on land not designated for development.

This is not Alcaucín’s first attempt to draw up an updated general urban development plan. SUR reported in 2017 on the efforts of the town hall to unblock a General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) , the process for which had begun years earlier. That period was also marked by the urban planning consequences of the so-called ‘Arcos case’ – a case of urban planning corruption – and by the situation regarding numerous properties being built without the correct licences and on non-urban land in the area.

The legal framework has changed since then. The LISTA, adopted in 2021 , introduced simplified instruments for small municipalities such as the PBOM. Andalusian regulations stipulate that this document must set out the municipal land-use planning framework, provide a general classification of urban and rural land, and also incorporate detailed urban land-use planning.

The publication of the tender marks the start of a new phase for Alcaucín but does not yet mean that the future uses of each plot of land have been decided. It is during the drafting, assessment, environmental evaluation, public consultation and administrative processing stages that the proposals will be finalised. The town hall summarises the objective as the desire to "define the village's model" and to establish the rules regarding "what can be built and done on every square metre of the municipality", a process which, according to the contractual timetable, could take up to five years.

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