Day: May 13, 2021

As it’s more than a month since I lodged my ‘demande de permis de construire’ at the Mairie at Fleurac and I have received no response, especially no negative response, I thought I’d contact Urbanisme at Rouffignac to check on progress. I thought that this automatically meant that my ‘demande’ would be approved, but still subject to the ‘normal’ 2 month timescale for a ‘tacite’ agreement. However, it appears that this only applies for ‘small’ works and that I must wait out the full 2 months before I can assume that I have a go-ahead. More importantly, a turn-down is still possible at any time during that period.

However, I was heartened to receive a very prompt reply to my email which not only included the above information but also said that an ‘arrêté’ had meantime been sent to the Mairie for signature and that I might like to contact them for more information. An ‘arrêté’ is a legal pronouncement or decree and it’s the official response that you receive to your planning application. Here’s a copy of the one that I received three years ago for my house extension which I never went ahead with.

Having been told that, for a short time my heart leapt. That was until I realised that you also receive an ‘arrêté’ when your application ‘n’est pas accorde’ ie has been declined. So I’m still no further on this morning and won’t be either until I can get advance information on the contents of the ‘arrêté’ or I actually receive it by post in the fullness of time. And I say ‘fullness of time’ because as the example above shows, after being signed by the Mairie it then has to be sent to the Sous-Préfecture at Sarlat, stamped by them and returned to the Mairie before being sent out to me, a process which takes up to another two weeks.

Today is a holiday in France (Ascension Day) but the Mairie at Fleurac would be closed anyway until tomorrow. So I’ll be going there tomorrow morning and just hope that they won’t still be closed with a ‘fermeture exceptionelle’ to give themselves a long week-end, which is what happened at Easter when I lodged my ‘demande’, losing me a week right at the start of the process.

So the possibility still remains that I could have my house build plans turned down, meaning that I’d have to cancel the purchase of this particular terrain and launch an urgent search for another. The only certainty at this point is that I must be out of my present house by the end of June, so there’s a distinct possibility that I could then be homeless without even any land to park my caravan on in which to live.

MCA, my original choice of house builder, has much to be held to account for as I’d never have been in this position if they hadn’t footled around and lost me three months from the beginning of January until the beginning of April when I eventually kicked them out and took charge of my project myself. I wish now that I’d done it sooner but as it is, I have no choice but to live with the consequences and the uncertainty that’s arisen as a result.