Estepona City Council Approves 516 Affordable Housing Units in Arroyo Vaquero
The city council gives initial green light to the residential project with 43% protected housing.
Estepona City Council has given initial approval to the modification of the Zoning Plan for the SURNS-O2 “Arroyo Vaquero Norte” sector and the development of the SURS-O8 sector, a project that includes 1,200 homes, 516 of which will be officially protected housing. The municipal corporation will establish as a condition that licenses for free-market and protected housing be processed simultaneously.
The initial approval, backed by favorable reports from the municipal technical services, opens a 45-day period for objections, during which any interested party may submit proposals regarding the proposed planning.
Voluntary reduction of buildable area
The project, promoted by Desarrollos Inmobiliarios Vaquero S.L., stands out for a significant reduction in the initially planned buildable area. The developers have chosen to lower the buildability index from 0.45 to 0.29 (effectively 0.23 for housing) and the density from 30 to 18 homes per hectare.
This decision has allowed them to limit development to 1,200 homes, when the initial planning could have reached 1,900. Forty-three percent of the total will be subsidized housing, exceeding the 30% reserve requirement.
Guarantees for the construction of subsidized housing in Arroyo Vaquero
The councillor for Urban Planning, Ana Velasco, announced that the City Council will include a specific condition in the procedure: “It is the intention of this corporation to include some requirement so that, at the same time as licences for open-market housing are processed, licences for subsidised housing are also processed, so that it is not just a mere reservation but is also actually enforceable.”
This measure responds to long-standing demands about the need to ensure that land set aside for subsidised housing is effectively turned into built homes.
The project has chosen a sustainable layout with lower density, cutting the buildable index from 0.45 to 0.23 for residential housing and the density from 30 to 18 dwellings per hectare. This voluntary decision by the developers means giving up almost 700 additional homes that the regulations would have allowed.
Transfers to the municipality
The developers will transfer several plots for public facilities to the City Council, including:
A 14,000 m² educational plot for a future public school
A 40,000 m² private plot also intended for educational use
10% of the residential floor area, as required by law
Legal framework and precedents
The development falls under the Andalusian Urban Planning Law, which allows detailed planning to be included within the sectorisation plan itself without the need to process a separate partial plan.
The obligation to reserve land for protected housing was introduced by Law 13/2005 of 11 November, which amended Andalusian urban planning regulations. The original sectorisation plan for this area dates from 2004, before that legal amendment.
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Political debate
Socialist spokeswoman Emma Molina has positively valued the inclusion of the condition to simultaneously process subsidized and free-market housing, something she stated “is the first time they’ve done in 10 years.” Molina recalled that the obligation to reserve land for subsidized housing was introduced in 2005 with the modification of the Andalusian Urban Planning Law, following the approval of the original 2004 plan.
The socialist positively valued that “you can opt for a sustainable organization with lower density” and emphasized that “this shows that we were doing our job at the time.”
VOX, represented by Mr. Aguilar, thanked the developers for “the voluntary reduction of buildability” although he considered that “the opportunity to increase the amount of subsidized housing has been wasted” by compensating the reduction in buildability with more protected housing.
The document will continue its administrative processing over the coming months, with the goal of beginning construction once the final approval process is completed.