Building License for Rural Property Andalucia
We are not architects. We contract a well-established local company which provides services from their architects, surveyors and engineers, as only a registered architect is allowed to sign the official plans which are required by the local authorities.
The architects prepare the complete project based on our designs and submit the documentation to the College of Architects, who also must stamp each page before it can be accepted by the local authorities.
All final plans are always checked by ourselves before submission to the College, as any errors at this stage can only lead to delays. This whole process takes between 4 and 6 weeks, although some additional time must be allowed for over Christmas and during August.
As soon as the project is approved by the College, we submit it and all required supporting documentation to the local authorities. This, at one stage, was the slowest part of the whole process. Now, we find that building permits are in our hands in, on average, about 6 weeks following submission.
During this 'waiting period', we carry out the following work (for which a building licence is not required):
- Prepare the land for the house
- Lay the connections for water and electricity if not already present (the actual connection cannot be finalised until we have the building permit)
- Excavate and construct the water tank and the septic tank
- Instruct the quality controllers (an independent company) to undertake the geological survey of the land (required for building guarantees).