By Emma Randle
The Auan British property rights association has launched a new initiative to address the plight of thousands of expats who still lack mains services and title deeds despite recent changes in the law to protect illegal homeowners.
According to the Auan, those affected live on estates illegally constructed by unscrupulous developers in breach of planning law and sold to unsuspecting foreign buyers, such as residents on the El Fas estate in Cantoria, who only last week were granted mains water after around 10 years of waiting.
Last year the Auan succeeded in changing planning law to make it possible for individual houses or those built on divided plots (parcelisations) to be ‘regularised’ by means of an ‘AFO’ certificate that brings an illegal property into the planning regime and entitles it to services.
However, houses that made up a ‘settlement’ were not included, having instead to go through the process of being added to a town plan, a process which can take years.
