Sintra extends support for the rehabilitation of real estate throughout the county

A Chamber of Sintra approved the revision of the regulation of the ReaViva program, for the participation of works in the common parts of the buildings, to cover the whole county, and not only in Urban Rehabilitation Area (ARU), the municipality informed.

The program, with the revision of the regulation, “begins to cover the whole county, so far limited to properties located” in ARU, “allowing more owners and condominiums to benefit from support for the rehabilitation of their buildings”, the camera advanced in a statement.

ReaViva Sintra, in force since February 2019, is a municipal initiative that grants “financial support to the bottom lost, up to the limit of 30,000 euros per intervention, aiming to promote the rehabilitation and recovery of buildings and urban areas of the municipality”.

“ The extension of the program to the whole county marks a significant change in municipal housing and urbanism policies, aligned with the current priorities on urban regeneration ", said the mayor, Marco Almeida (PSD), quoted in the note.

The proposal to revise the regulation, which will still be submitted to the Sintra Municipal Assembly, was adopted unanimously at the previous executive meeting.

According to the proposal of the vice president of the municipality, Francisco Duarte (PSD), to which Lusa had access, the assessment of the applications for the programme, the procedural management and technical monitoring of the interventions raised “some questions about the adequacy of the regulation”, justifying its review.

This review, it stands out, aims to “concrete the support in terms previously configured, but expanding to the whole territory”, when until now it was intended for buildings located in ARU.

In addition, it reinforces the framework for applications that are now not covered and the possibility of a new application, where it is demonstrated that the works could not be identified at the time of the previous application and “they do not harm the previously made and shared works”.

The works, according to the draft regulation, shall start within the “maximum 90 working days” from the notification of the approval of the application, with an extension of up to 30 days, deductible penalties in the amount of the contribution for delays between two (20%) and eight weeks (100%).

In the Regulation in force, the support is intended for buildings built “at least 30 years ago”, a period that falls in the review to “at least 24 years”, and buildings must have “at least 50% or more of the autonomous fractions/units of the building used for housing purposes, or 50% or more of the sum of permilages affected by housing”.

According to previous information from the municipality, urban rehabilitation, with the ReaViva programme, of the common parts of buildings, is approaching “EUR 1 million” this year.