More than 8,000 property owners have applied to regularise their non-sanctionable property in the past 19 months, the Planning Authority said.

It said in a statement that, of these, nearly 7,000 submissions got validated resulting in over €16 million revenue through this scheme alone.

Back in August 2016, the authority launched the regularisation scheme with the prime purpose of facilitating the sale of properties which were idle on the market due to irregularities that were not sanctionable.

Regularisation could only be considered if a property was located entirely within the development boundaries and appeared in the authority’s aerial photos of 2016. The illegality could not be creating an injury to amenity and the use of the building had to be according to current policies.

If one of these conditions could not be satisfied, then the scheme could not be applied. The applicable fee was calculated on the total and combined roofed over area of each floor of the property being regularised.

The majority of the monies collected from this scheme, up to 70%, were utilised in the restoration of properties that were scheduled or in urban conservation areas, through the Irrestawra Darek grant scheme.

Another 20% was allocated towards the Development Planning Fund, to be utilised by localities in community improvement projects.