The Plenary of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, with the votes of the government group, has approved "initiating the actions allowed by Law to archive the document for the revision of the Island Plan that had been in process since 2007", and whose contract expired on October 1, 2019. According to them, the reason is "the profound modifications that must legally be carried out" given the time that has passed, so they will opt for "the implementation of a new ordering of the island."
“It is a tough, brave and, above all, essential decision if we want to have an Island Plan that responds to the real needs of the island”, defended the president of the Cabildo, María Dolores Corujo.
“There have been months of draft reports and, above all, a lot of discussion with different specialists, both in the field of planning and in the legal field, trying to unblock a complicated situation. Setting aside what has already been processed is not just a political decision, and requires the essential legal framework to adopt such a far-reaching decision,” Corujo highlighted.
As explained during the Plenary by the councilor of the area, Ariagona González, “approving the current document would mean approving a document that is born dead, as it responds to a diagnosis made in 2007 and tries to respond to the challenges that we faced 15 years ago”.
“Outdated in time”
To this, the government group adds "the legislative changes that have occurred as a result of the approval in 2017 of the Law on Land and Protected Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands", noting that "they leave the provisions contained in the document in a situation of extreme legal uncertainty".
In this regard, they emphasize that this law "drastically reduced the planning capacity of island plans and introduced the principle of containment by which any rule that exceeds this now reduced content becomes null and void".
"We are therefore faced with an instrument that is outdated in time and of a legal quality that is more than questionable, due to the legislative changes that have occurred", the councilor pointed out, thus explaining the "convenience of betting on the formula of archiving what has been done and restarting the work that allows the approval of a new Island Plan that starts from a certain reality, that responds to current challenges and that enjoys full legal certainty".
Finally, the president pointed out that she is confident that in a "short period of time" the final archiving of the file can be approved in plenary and clarified that work will be done in parallel on hiring the new team that will be in charge of drafting the new Island Plan.