The Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda (MIVAU) has communicated to the municipalities the resolution to the requests for extension of the justification period for the execution of the subsidies of Line 1 of the Program to Promote the Rehabilitation of Public Buildings for Local Entities of the Plan of Recovery, Transformation and Resilience.
The minister announced during a visit to a project benefiting from this expansion in Argamasilla de Calatrava (Ciudad Real) that the Ministry has accepted 159 requests for extension of time that have been requested by the beneficiaries of these subsidies “in response to the concern of the mayors and in accordance with the call”. The minister took advantage of the visit to highlight the "magnificent way" with which all the projects of the Local PIREP -499, specifically - are managed by the municipalities.
abel Rodríguez announced last June in the Senate that the Government would attend to the situation of each project that needs a longer term for the completion of the works "knowing the difficulties of some municipalities" and offering them the possibility of requesting a motivated extension of that term.
The following day, MIVAU initiated the procedure for local authorities to submit the request for an extension of the deadline. By virtue of the provisions of the regulatory bases for granting this aid, which gives the Ministry the capacity to modify the initial conditions of the concession resolution, provided that the changes do not affect the intended objectives of rehabilitation or the fundamental aspects of the actions proposed for the implementation of the projects object of the aid.
In total, MIVAU has accepted the expansion of 159 projects throughout the country.
In the case of Cantabria, an extension of the deadline has been accepted. Specifically, it is the project of rehabilitation and conditioning of the building of the former headquarters of the chamber of commerce, in the municipality of Torrelavega and which has an investment of 570,816.38 € for the rehabilitation of a space of 647.80 m2.
In this session of the Senate, Isabel Rodríguez recalled the importance of the PIREP’s actions not being slowed down to meet the deadline committed to Europe. An investment program –Investment 5 of Component 2 of the PRTR– that has a total budget of 1,080 M€ for sustainable rehabilitation of the institutional public park, with a comprehensive vision and for all types of buildings for public use. 55.5% (600 M€) is allocated to Local Entities, through competitive competition, and 44.5% (480 M€) is for the CCAA, Ceuta and Melilla, through transfers of funds.
Currently, the PIREP program has 199.780 m² whose works have been completed (currently in the verification phase of compliance with the requirements). In addition, the Ministry expects that by December 31, 2024, the works of 888,864 m² of the PIREP program will have been completed.
In Cantabria, in particular, the Local PIREP Program allocates 5,668,901.01 € of the Recovery Plan for a total of 6 projects, with which an area of 15,732.20 m2 of public buildings will be rehabilitated.
European funds, keys to economic recovery
The minister, in her speech, has focused on the importance of the recovery funds, which the president of the Government “achieved in the worst of the pandemic” and which have brought “the current moment of growth, economic recovery and future for Spain”. Rodríguez has highlighted that these funds have changed the trend in management with respect to the previous economic crisis. He says that this is a “different” way of conceiving public investments “towards a green horizon, of combating and combating climate change, of improving all buildings, including public buildings.”
Isabel Rodríguez highlighted that the PIREP program, which has an investment of 1,080 million euros, the Ministry estimates that 18,000 direct jobs have been created in a sector that for the holder of Housing and Urban Agenda “is very important to respond to that great commitment we have with housing in Spain as is the construction sector”.
PIREP objectives
The program aims to rehabilitate buildings of public use and ownership from a comprehensive vision of rehabilitation and for all types of public buildings and is based on a series of reforms, such as the implementation of the Urban Agenda, the strategy of long-term rehabilitation of the built park (ERESEE), and the Law of Quality of Architecture.
The European Commission has established as a prerequisite for rehabilitation programmes to ensure a 30% reduction in non-renewable primary energy consumption. The ambitious commitment of this Program is also to ensure that the actions have an integral character and are exemplary from the point of view of architectural quality.
The objective is to highlight the exemplary role that the public administration must play, both in the fulfillment of the obligation of energy renovation of the public park built and in the quality of the actions carried out with the financing offered by the PRTR. Its most ambitious objective is the renovation of the public building stock to achieve a high-quality, energy-efficient and decarbonised building stock by 2050, in line with Europe's objectives in the fight against climate change. The obligation to renew the energy of the park already exists within the scope of the general administration of the State, since Article 5 of the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012 establishes the obligation for the central administration to renew energetically and annually, 3% of its public park.
Development Lines
The Ministerial Order of 2022 approving the regulatory bases for the granting of such aid and the call for applications establishes that the call is articulated through two lines of development of the actions with their associated deadlines:
• Line 1: Building to be rehabilitated whose reception of work, without observations or objections, takes place at most on September 30, 2024 (at least 290,000 m² rehabilitated).
• Line 2: Building to be rehabilitated whose reception of work, without observations or objections, takes place at most on March 31, 2026 (at least 1,230,000 m² rehabilitated).