Pilar de la Horadada reaches agreement to adopt Lo Romero Golf urbanisation public areas

The council will spend 180,000 euros annually maintaining green areas and public roads

Pilar de la Horadada reaches agreement to adopt Lo Romero Golf urbanisation public areas
Pilar de la Horadada town council has formalized an agreement to take over the basic maintenance and services of green areas and public carriageways on the "Lo Romero Golf" urbanisation, located on the road that connects Pilar de la Horadada with Pinar de Campoverde.

Work on the residential complex began in 2005 and the properties that have been built represent only a small percentage of the intended project (less than 10 percent), the owners of those that were constructed finding themselves in a similar position to that of thousands of other property owners along the coastlines of the Spanish Costas when the developer failed to complete the total infrastructure enabling the local council to formally take over the completed project.

This type of situation is a nightmare for local councils, as they have no legal obligation to take over a development if it has not been completed to the specified levels laid down when licences were granted to a private developer. Although developers will normally place a cash guarantee before licences are granted, these are rarely anywhere near sufficient for developments to be completed to the planned specifications when the project is not completed and after 2008 when the property boom in Spain turned into a massive property crash which in turn became an eight year economic recession, thousands of builders and developers went into bankruptcy, leaving the costas peppered with incomplete building projects and councils with hundreds of half-built urbanisations.

This problem affects both residents who have purchased the completed properties, as well as the councils themselves, as the residents expect street lighting to work, rubbish to be collected, and for roads and green areas to be maintained, but councils are often left incomplete infrastructures, with significant sums of money required to bring the facilities up to an acceptable standard, but no money with which to do this.

In some instances when residents have managed to take the issues they face to court, the ruling has gone against the council as the courts have understood that the municipalities have tacitly received the properties because they perform services such as rubbish collection and urban cleaning. In truth, councils are assuming that responsibility when they allow the streets and parks to be open to the passage of vehicles and pedestrians under their responsibility. But very often councils will fulfill these basic obligations but refuse to take on responsibility for green areas, parkland, ornamental areas etc.

In other instances, the arguing over whether the council should adopt an incomplete urbanisation has gone on for years, leaving residents with no services, and in yet others, councils have only agreed to take on maintenance for arterial infrastructures, forcing the residents to form their own entities in order to finance the provision of their own services. In some developments built alongside golf courses, owners have found themselves stranded alongside a weed-strewn abandoned course when a developer went bust and in some extreme situations a cluster of properties have been left marooned in the middle of a field with no services at all.

In this instance, agreement has now been reached between the mayor of Pilar de la Horadada, José María Pérez Sánchez, Agustín Martínez from Urdemasa, and Isaac Sánchez and Rubén Grau, from the Horadada Golf Center, whereby the town hall of Pilar de la Horadada will spend 180,000 euros per year in the maintenance of the basic services of the residential complex which borders o the golf course.

The reception agreement includes all green areas and parks, with an area of 37,279 square meters, sports equipment areas of 26,641 square meters, other plots destined for municipal technical services, a road network of 121,951 square meters, pedestrian network of 4 linear kilometers and 74,629 square meters of surface, in addition to other plots for public supply services, sanitation, pumping stations, fire services areas, drinking water as well as the lighting of public areas and their roads.

The reception agreement also entails the infrastructure protection band, that is, the highway easement next to the CV-925 of 11,492 square meters, ready for a possible extension or doubling of the road in the future. The annual cost of maintaining these public spaces will be 180,000 euros.