The Administrative court (TA) has revoked the building permit for a building near the Residence of the Islands in Ajaccio. Twice, however, the court had forced the city hall to issue the same permit. However, this decision paves the way for a sanctuarization of the territory.
Continuation and end of yet another urban serial. With a sentence rendered on December 16, the administrative court of Bastia annulled the building permit granted in April 2021 to SCI CGP Immobilier by the municipality of Ajaccio. This project involved the construction of a building of 27 units spread over seven levels, near the Le Sicily, Résidence des Îles building.
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Contacted, the project leader, Jean-Paul Farrucci, did not want to comment on the decision of the TA. “Hosted people want to prevent those who need accommodation from being able to do it”, complaint, however, complaining that we “treats promoters as cheaters and dishonest”.
For its part, the association of residents of the Résidence des Îles, which challenged the building permit, has expressed its ” satisfaction ” through the voice of its president, Simone Maïsetti.
In its decision, the Administrative Court upheld several submissions invoked by the public speaker as well as by the appellants, namely the residents’ association. In addition to the lack of clearance for customs clearance and a solution for connection to the public sewage and rainwater network, the real estate project derogates, according to the sentence, from the provisions of the 2013 local urban plan, applicable at the time of filing the first application approval, in April 2018. While this PLU then authorized a maximum of five levels in this area, the planned building has seven.
Furthermore, the building permit does not provide for sufficient free collective spaces and does not provide for a sufficient turning area to allow motorists to make a U-turn in one of the residence’s parking lots.
“Just change the PLU! »
Many defects that could have been regularized through an application for a corrective building permit. But a final means withheld by the administrative judge seals the fate of the real estate project. Since the latter is located on land included in the site registered on the north shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio, established by ministerial decree of December 1951, and which constitutes, pursuant to the Town Planning Code, “a notable site or landscape”. And if, the court recalls, this provision does not “no obstacle to building permits on already urbanized land”the building project, is part of “a vast natural sector, free of buildings, which extends towards the north-east, while this territory is largely wooded”. This element invalidates the license as a whole and makes it irregular, even if, the judges of Villa Montepiano admit, “the land intended to accommodate the project borders on an urbanized area located to the south and west”.
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This decision paves the way for a sanctuarization of the plots concerned and offers a solid legal argument in the event that Council or residents should again refuse or contest an application for planning permission in the sector. A regulatory framework that has not escaped the residents’ association, which in a tweet invites the town hall of Ajaccio to anticipate: “The lots have become extraordinary spaces, therefore unbuildable! Then you just have to change the PLU! Now we count on you, Mayor, to regularize! “.
The only possible recourse for the promoter: seizure by the Council of State
The administrative judge, on the other hand, did not acknowledge “the risks of landslides and natural gullies” claimed by the association. Reason that was not accepted even by the administrative summary judge, who suspended the project, in January 2022. No more than by the speaker during the hearing in early December. “On these issues the judge’s control is limited to the manifest error of evaluation”, explains, in this regard, Christine Castany. However, it was the instability of the extremely steep area and the risk of landslides that led the Municipality to refuse the building permit to the Farrucci group twice, in August 2018 and in March 2020. In both cases, it was precisely of the administrative court of Bastia which had, in November 2019 and March 2021, annulled the mayor’s denials and accepted the request of the leader.
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Strange case in which the TA cancels a permit that he himself forced to issue and condemns the costs to a community that was wrong to invoke the wrong legal means. “This dispute did not concern the same parties and does not have the same object as the present appeal”, opposes in its decision, the administrative judge to the SCI, which has made use of the authority of res judicata. The court also recalls that the permit issued could still be challenged, in the name of the rights of third parties.
Under the Code of Administrative Justice, the TA’s decision is not subject to appeal to the Marseille Administrative Court of Appeal, but only to an appeal to the Council of State. The promoter has not specified whether he intends to appeal to the supreme administrative judge. If necessary, he has a period of two months to do so.
