The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda awards 294 million of European funds to local authorities to rehabilitate public buildings

The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda has awarded 293.7 million euros in European NextGenerationEU funds to 187 local authorities across Spain to refurbish public buildings. Of the total, Mitma has definitively granted 274.1 million euros to 171 municipalities, councils, deputations or city halls, under Line 2 of the Programme for the Comprehensive Rehabilitation of Locally Owned Public Buildings (Pirep Local). The remaining 19.5 million euros relates to the resolution of claims and appeals presented in the framework of the competitive calls for tenders of lines 1 and 2 of the programme of the Recovery Plan.

Specifically, the Ministry has decided to to provisionally grant 16 million euros from Line 2 to eight town councils and one regional council for work on nine buildings, and 3.5 million euros from line 1 to seven municipalities to renovate public buildings for sports, educational, administrative, etc. uses.

The nine provisional beneficiaries have 10 days from the date following the notification of the decision to accept, refuse or lodge any relevant contentions.

In total, the 293.7 million euros granted through the three resolutions published today on the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda's website will finance the renovation of 196 locally owned public buildings, 55% of which are or will be used for cultural, sporting and educational purposes, benefiting more than 14 million citizens.

At this point, it should be noted that more than half of the beneficiary local authorities have fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, of which some 55 have a population of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda opened the call for applications for both lines of the Public Building Rehabilitation Programme (Pirep) in the first quarter of 2022, but line 1 had a shorter deadline for the submission of bids and the resolution than line 2, which, in turn, includes a series of scale requirements in the projects to be able to participate.

Final Pirep Resolution Local Line 2

According to the final resolution of Line 2 published today, 274 million euros will go to finance 180 rehabilitation actions chosen from among the 1,020 submitted by 880 municipalities, city halls, councils and island councils based on criteria of architectural quality, soundness, governance, integrated approach, innovation and opportunity, so that all of them register an approach based on the principles of quality enacted by the Law on the Quality of Architecture.

It should not be forgotten that the call for proposals was held on a competitive basis, so that the actions that obtained the highest score were selected.

Of the selected projects, 86 are located in municipalities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, with special emphasis on those with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, the so-called demographic challenge municipalities, where 30 projects will be implemented.

Not to mention the 84 buildings currently in disuse that will receive grants from the Programme to address the problems of the urban environment caused by the existence of these vacant buildings.

The programme has an key social dimension and contributes to the reinforcement and improvement of public services. Unsurprisingly, 60% of the 180 buildings to be rehabilitated with the help of European funds are or will be used for cultural, educational and sporting purposes. Specifically:

• 75 actions for buildings for cultural use.
• 25 actions for administrative buildings
• 15 actions aimed at buildings for sports use.
• 17 actions for educational buildings.

The rest of the uses are varied, although the renovations of administrative buildings or buildings for public services stand out, including municipal markets, police stations, civic centres, laboratories, etc. In this sense, 84 buildings that are currently in disuse will be rehabilitated, thus addressing the problem that the existence of these vacant buildings represents for the urban environment and allocating them to public use.

The projects accepted under Line 2 had to meet at least two of the three scale requirements set out in the Ministerial Order of Bases: a works budget equal to or greater than 500,000 euros, an intervention on at least 1,000 square metres of surface area and, lastly, that the degree of intervention of the action is equal to or greater than 500 euros/m2.

Programme to Promote the Rehabilitation of Public Buildings

These three resolutions are in addition to the 307 million euros granted in 2022 to 381 local authorities to rehabilitate public buildings in the framework of Line 1 of the Pirep. Thus, in total, the Ministry has granted some 600 million euros in aid from the European recovery funds to 496 municipalities, provincial city halls and councils throughout Spain to rehabilitate 598 buildings, of which 69% are or will be destined for cultural (228), educational (50) and public services (135) uses. European funds directly benefit the nearly 22.5 million people living in these localities.

All actions subsidised under Line 2 must be completed and have a works acceptance certificate before 31 March 2026. For their part, the projects selected under Line 1 must ensure that they receive their works, without observations or objections, by 30 September 2024.

The final granting of the aid implies that, once the renovation is complete, the buildings must be used for public purposes for at least 20 years and generate significant savings in energy consumption.

This investment also ensures a reduction of more than 30% in non-renewable primary energy consumption, improvements in accessibility, habitability and boosting the conservation of the building stock, with investments in buildings that currently have multiple uses.

The European NextGenerationEU funds finance up to 100% of the eligible costs of actions aimed at reducing non-renewable primary energy consumption by at least 30%, and in the case of complementary actions (sustainability, accessibility, habitability and conservation) 85% of the eligible costs are subsidised, without exceeding 50% of the amount of the main actions (reduction of non-renewable primary energy consumption).

This comprehensive approach has been one of the main focuses of this programme, which seeks to contribute to the fight against climate change, improve the quality of life and solve important deficiencies in the public building stock in terms of habitability, such as deficient acoustic comfort, indoor air quality, accessibility problems and the improvement of obsolete or outdated layouts for new ways of working, etc.

The Pirep is included in Investment 5 of Component 2 of the Recovery Plan, initially provided with 1.08 billion euros, of which 480 million has already been transferred to the autonomous communities and cities of Ceuta and Melilla to finance the energy refurbishment of their public buildings.

Non official translation