Rita Hernández, councilor for Tourism and Beaches, Urban Planning and Technical Office of the Teguise City Council, has intervened this Friday in the program Buenos días, Lanzarote of Radio Lanzarote - Onda Cero where she has explained the accumulation of thousands of urban planning files without processing.
Specifically, there are more than 5,000 files that remain unresolved and the councilwoman has stated that this problem "is not new because when we entered the Government in 2023 there were files from 2015, 2017 or 2019". In this regard, she has assured that "we continue fighting with some other old ones of this type, but now through judicial means, but now we continue working with the number of files".
Hernández has emphasized that, of this number of files, "not all are waiting for a home", but some "are waiting for a report or for a certificate". Thus, he has pointed out that for two months they have been "trying to go looking at the files" and there are many of them for whom documentation has been requested from the interested parties but "they have not responded". For this reason, he has announced that "many of those files will have to be closed".
According to what the councilwoman of the area has explained, the main solution to this problem of accumulation of files are human resources. "We need staff for a period to be able to catch up," she has indicated. Currently the Technical Office has four quantity surveyors, an architect, a lawyer, a chief engineer, an engineer for classified activities and six administrative assistants. Regarding this, she has pointed out the heavy workload that the lawyer of this area faces. Likewise, she has revealed that a lawyer assigned to Contracting has joined the Urban Planning area to streamline the work.
"This year a new lawyer position has come out for the Technical Office and now we are waiting to start doing all the procedure to see if we can hire someone from the employment pools of the Cabildo and other town councils", he/she has said.
In addition, he/she has stated that "we still have not finished the procedure to be able to contract and sign the contracts with the company Gesplan and this, for me, would be the light I see at the end of the tunnel".
On the other hand, he has announced that the Teguise City Council has hired an IT company that is installing a platform so that anyone can request their urban planning report on the City Council's website to be able to obtain it in less than a minute. "Everything in public administration takes a long time... it took ten months to get this company to finally sign the documents," he has assured.