The Senate on Wednesday gave
definitive approval to Deputy Premier and Transport and Industry
Minister Matteo Salvini's so-called 'save-home' (salva-casa)
decree.
The legislation aims to simplify the bureaucratic procedures
citizens face when they want to doing building work on their
properties and, among other things, it enables owners to have
small-scale illegal building work pardoned.
The law also increases the scope for renovations to create
bedsits and makes it easier to change the official purpose that
a property can be used for, whether it be a home or a place of
business etc.
The decree got the definitive green light with 106 votes in
favour, 68 against and one abstention.
When the package was approved by Premier Giorgia Meloni's
cabinet, Salvini described it as "a common-sense decree that
regularizes small deformities, freeing council offices of
millions of construction cases and restoring full use of the
properties to the legitimate owners".
Salvini stressed that the measure is not a full-blown amnesty on
illegal building work, which Italy has had many of in the past,
in part in order to raise revenues by getting property owners to
pay to have the irregularities pardoned.
Critics say such measures encourage illegal building work.
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