About 100 owners of local properties that have a ‘Housing for Tourist Use’ licence are annoyed by some of the issues arising from the extension of the deadline, until 3 October, to adapt to the new licence requirements.
Some of the owners, who already said they never received any notification in the first place that asked for new documentation to confirm their properties complied with new requirements, have since said that ‘this extension of time has included a new requirement based on fire safety’.
This new demand, according to the owners, requires fire extinguishers, emergency lights and signs indicating where the exit is to be placed in the property. Another issue that has caused upset is that in order to certify that the properties have all these recently amended elements, it is necessary to present a certificate from an architect, which incurs an extra expense.
A further reason for complaint is that the procedure must be done online using a digital certificate. Many of the owners are foreigners and do not have this document, and are therefore having a lot of trouble completing the procedure.
In addition, users with a tourist accommodation licence believe that ‘it is illegal to ask to present new documentation to maintain an existing licence without an expiry date in order to keep it’.
The Sitges Town Council, meanwhile, has said that article 25, based on fire safety of the new requirements, ‘is not a new requirement, but already appears in those approved at the June 2021 council plenary session’.
The council states that the procedure ‘can be done electronically or in person, in the case of individuals, and electronically in the case of legal entities, as is typical of all administrative procedures’, stressing that ‘the council does not have powers to modify administrative procedures’.
They also state that ‘the aim is not to withdraw the licences, but to adapt them to the municipal requirements, and the extended deadline has been given because the town council does not want to overwhelm anyone’.
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