Law 28/2002 in English: buildings, PBG and SLF, article by article

Every villa is a building before it is anything else. The statute behind the two documents that decide whether it may be built and whether it may be used.

Law 28/2002, the articles a builder or buyer meets, in order

Every villa is a building before it is anything else. Law 28/2002 is the statute behind the PBG and the SLF — the two documents that decide whether a building may be built and whether it may be used. The 2023 job-creation law deleted most of its original technical articles and rewrote the rest around those two documents.

Function: what the building is allowed to be

A building’s function must be used according to the designation of the location in the detailed spatial plan (Law 28/2002 art. 6(1), as amended by Law 6/2023); the function is stated in the PBG, and changing it needs a new PBG from the central government (Law 28/2002 art. 6(3), as amended by Law 6/2023). A house turned into a rental villa may be a change of function in this sense — which is why the PBG’s stated function is worth reading before buying a villa sold as an income property. Building functions in PP 16/2021.

Customary and heritage buildings follow special provisions (Law 28/2002 art. 7(3), as amended by Law 6/2023) — relevant in Bali, where traditional compounds and temple-adjacent structures are common.

Permit, inspection, certificate

Construction may start only after a PBG is obtained (Law 28/2002 art. 36A(1), as amended by Law 6/2023); the government inspects each stage of construction (Law 28/2002 art. 36B(3), as amended by Law 6/2023); and the building may be used only after it has an SLF (Law 28/2002 art. 37(1), as amended by Law 6/2023). The SLF is issued together with the evidence of building ownership (Law 28/2002 art. 37(4), as amended by Law 6/2023) — so the fitness certificate and the evidence of who owns the building travel together.

For a leasehold villa the next article is the important one: a building may be built on someone else’s land, and doing so requires a written agreement between the landowner and the building owner (Law 28/2002 art. 35(3), as amended by Law 6/2023). That agreement is usually the lease itself. Whether it says who owns the building — and what happens to it when the lease ends — decides what the lessee actually has. Leasehold explained.

The owner’s and the user’s duties

The owner must provide a technical plan meeting the standards for its function, a PBG, building to that plan, central-government approval for changes to the plan during construction, and qualified designers, contractors, supervisors and assessors (Law 28/2002 art. 40(2), as amended by Law 6/2023). Owner and user alike have the right to know the procedure, and be told the designated use and building intensity at the location, the technical standards, and any protection that applies (Law 28/2002 art. 41(1), as amended by Law 6/2023), and must use the building according to its function, maintain it regularly, keep a use and maintenance manual, carry out periodic fitness inspections, and repair or demolish it when required (Law 28/2002 art. 41(2), as amended by Law 6/2023).

Two of those duties land on a buyer the day the villa changes hands. The building must be used according to its function — the one in the PBG — and its fitness must be checked periodically. A villa bought with an SLF issued years ago is not, on the face of article 41, finished with inspections. The right to be told the designated use and building intensity is the one to exercise before buying: it is the official answer to “what may I build here?”

When a building can come down

A building may be demolished if it is not fit for function and cannot be repaired, it is dangerous, it has no PBG, or inspection finds it differs from the approved technical plan (Law 28/2002 art. 39(1), as amended by Law 6/2023). An owner is entitled to compensation where the central government demolishes it through no fault of the owner (Law 28/2002 art. 40(1)(f), as amended by Law 6/2023) — but a building demolished for having no PBG is demolished through the owner’s fault, on our reading of the two provisions together. When technical standards change, an owner must still meet them, in stages (Law 28/2002 art. 34(4), as amended by Law 6/2023).

This is commentary, not legal advice. The detail is in PP 16/2021, which has its own page on this site.

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