The Regional Minister for the Environment, Territorial Planning and Housing, Iñaki Arriola, today reiterated that the Technical Inspection of Buildings (ITE) is the “most suitable system we have for ensuring that the state of conservation and safety of the buildings we live in is adequate, and for preventing more serious risks and repairs in the future”. Arriola made this statement at the presentation of the new features that have been incorporated into the Euskoregite portal for managing ITEs which will come into operation on May 1. The event took place in the conference hall at the headquarters of the Basque Government in Vitoria-Gasteiz and was attended by representatives of the professional associations of property administrators, architects and quantity surveyors, and technical staff from the various Basque city councils and public urban planning and redevelopment companies.
The portal will have a specific access area for each type of stakeholder. All users will have a simple and intuitive unified management and information tool, which will facilitate the electronic processing of the entire ITE cycle, for example, drafting reports, the remedial process identified, making a building use and maintenance plan available to the owners, including the report in the Register of Technical Inspections of Buildings in the Basque Country and making the public information in the register available to the public.
This way, the owners, technical inspection staff and municipal staff assigned may consult the administrative status of the ITE at any time (signed, sent, received, published), and the status of the ITE itself: on time, pending, submitted with the levels of intervention required (levels 1, 2, 3 and 4), partially or fully rectified, expired or pending etc. In addition, it will allow the maximum possible electronic interoperability between administrations and its continuous updating.
Until the new EUSKOREGITE platform comes into operation, and with the aim of allowing them to get used to the new forms, a module will be made available to technical staff so that they can get used to the new process to write up inspections. There will also be a period of more specific training and information for all agents involved.
44,891 ITEs at December 31, 2019
According to the last quarterly report for 2019, which ended on December 31, a total of 44,891 technical inspections were registered in the Basque Country. 35,288 of these relate to buildings which require inspection by law, as they are more than 50 years old.
Overall, the degree of compliance is 47%. In other words, 35,288 inspections have been registered out of a total of the 75,013 buildings that were required to do so because of their age.
Arriola stressed that “although it’s not a negligible percentage, it’s not something we can settle for either”. He added that, “I hope that with the coordinated work of all of us we will be able to convey to the public the idea that carrying out an inspection of buildings is not a gratuitous obligation imposed by the Administration. That an ITE is the best way to monitor the state of conservation and safety of a building; that it is the best way to anticipate problems and save on infinitely more costly actions later”.
