Senate approves Salvini's 'save-home' decree

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 24 - The Senate on Wednesday gave definitive approval to Deputy Premier and Transport and Industry Minister Matteo Salvini's so-called 'save-home' (salva-casa) decree.
    The legislation aims to simplify the bureaucratic procedures citizens face when they want to doing building work on their properties and, among other things, it enables owners to have small-scale illegal building work pardoned.
    The law also increases the scope for renovations to create bedsits and makes it easier to change the official purpose that a property can be used for, whether it be a home or a place of business etc.
    The decree got the definitive green light with 106 votes in favour, 68 against and one abstention.
    When the package was approved by Premier Giorgia Meloni's cabinet, Salvini described it as "a common-sense decree that regularizes small deformities, freeing council offices of millions of construction cases and restoring full use of the properties to the legitimate owners".
    Salvini stressed that the measure is not a full-blown amnesty on illegal building work, which Italy has had many of in the past, in part in order to raise revenues by getting property owners to pay to have the irregularities pardoned.
    Critics say such measures encourage illegal building work.
    (ANSA).