The Plenary approves a 4.5 million euro comprehensive remodeling and infrastructure plan for districts and neighborhoods

The project includes a total renovation of sets of streets in areas such as the Armed Forces, around the Orchidarium, or the Marqués del Duero Avenue in Cancelada, among others. The Plenary gives the green light to measures to promote the construction of subsidized housing for rent and VPO for sale.

The Plenary of the Estepona City Council has given the green light to a budget amendment that allows to allocate about 4.5 million euros from the surplus of the year 2024 to a comprehensive plan of remodeling and infrastructure both in the town center and in the suburbs.

It is a major project that, in some cases, covers entire neighborhoods. Thus, this plan currently includes works on Montemayor Street and Marqués de Duero Avenue in Cancelada, the remodeling of the Fuerzas Armadas neighborhood, the streets around the Orquidario and the roads located between Plaza del Ajedrez and Avenida de Andalucía.

These are comprehensive interventions that affect all existing infrastructures, from service networks to paving, sidewalks and accessibility measures. “They are comprehensive remodeling of sets of streets to which we want to give a joint and uniform solution with all those actions necessary for its adjustment,” says the Deputy Mayor for Development and Infrastructure, Ana Velasco.

The budget settlement of 2024, also approved at the Plenary, has stood out for having yielded the best economic data of the last decades of Estepona, with a record surplus of 45.63 million euros and a budget stability of 24.04 million euros. Since the 2015 budget settlement, the accounts of the Estepona City Council have all economic magnitudes in green. The municipal government team understands that this economic bonanza must revert to the whole of the citizens of Estepona, further influencing the productive investment policies that have been generating so much development in the city.

Specifically, with the budget amendment approved today, it is intended to enhance the works and maintenance of the different districts and neighborhoods of Estepona.

The Plenary has also approved another budget amendment to allocate 20 million euros to pay the inherited debt, so that during this year would be paid almost all of the debt left by previous governments in the City Council, which reached 304 million euros.

The idea with which it works is to amortize this year 20 of the 24 million euros remaining today of debt. In this way, during the 2026 financial year, an ambitious tax reduction plan will be implemented, on which work is already underway.

Housing

The Plenary has also approved two important initiatives aimed at creating subsidized housing, as well as protecting the buyer of new housing in the city.

On the one hand, the Consistory will allocate plots that currently have the qualification of public equipment in the current General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) to the construction of subsidized housing for rent to meet the existing demand, especially for vulnerable people.

The City Council takes as a basis the Decree-Law 1/2025, of February 24, of urgent measures on housing, recently approved by the Junta de Andalucía, which provides for the possibility of building public rental housing on plots of equipment, without the need to amend the planning instruments when these soils have no specific use or are qualified with the generic use of public and social interest, ie, that are not reserved for health or educational use. Therefore, the Consistory will carry out, through its Municipal Technical Services, a study and inventory of the most suitable plots to assign, in accordance with the provisions of the aforementioned law and the municipal PGOU, the residential use for housing or housing dotacional.

The proposal also provides that all plots of municipal ownership for subsidized housing, whenever technically possible, will apply the increase in density of 10 percent provided for in the regional law.

In addition, a study will be carried out by the Municipal Technical Services on the residential plots owned by the Estepona City Council which, due to their characteristics and location, can be used entirely for housing subject to a public protection regime. In this sense, the aim is to increase its density by 20 percent, so as to allow the largest possible number of subsidized housing.

Another initiative that has been given the green light is intended to strengthen the protection of the buyer of new housing in the municipality, so that when accessing the same their promoters have completed all the works of the building environment. To this end, the Consistory will give priority to the completion of the urbanization works (sidewalks, curbs, roads, services, etc.) corresponding to the new housing constructions in Estepona, when granting the corresponding building licenses.

The proposal establishes as a general criterion the non-granting of building licenses in those areas where the urbanization is in progress, and until all the works of the entire area of the execution unit or sector in question have been received by the Town Hall.

This criterion, and in order to safeguard the public interest, will not be applied in cases of construction of subsidized housing, although special care will be taken to ensure that such housing can count on all the necessary facilities and services.