Planning Permits and Objections in Cyprus

Two permits, two clocks

In short

• Planning permission decides whether you may develop; the building permit, under the Streets and Buildings Regulation Law, Cap. 96, governs how it is built.
• A refusal starts a short clock: the hierarchical recourse deadlines are counted in days, not months.
• A neighbour's illegal works have remedies, administrative and civil, and timing decides both.

Kleanthous & Platis acts on the legal side of Cyprus development control: refusals and conditions on planning permission, building permit disputes, enforcement notices, and the neighbour disputes that grow out of unauthorised works. We work alongside the architects and engineers who handle the technical file; our work is the decision, the recourse, and the deadline.

Cyprus runs a two-permit system. Planning permission, under the Town and Country Planning Law, decides the substance: use, storeys, building factor, access. The building permit, under the Streets and Buildings Law, governs execution, and it cannot lawfully issue unless it conforms with the planning permission. Knowing which permit your problem lives under is the first question, because the recourse routes and deadlines differ.

Each permit has its own prohibition, and both are wider than people expect. Section 21 of the Town and Country Planning Law, Law 90/1972, forbids the commencement of any development of immovable property unless planning permission authorising it has been granted. Section 20(1) then defines development as the carrying out of building, engineering, mining or other operations in, on, over or under immovable property, or the making of any material change in the use of a building or other immovable property, and section 20(2) removes the usual arguments by naming four things that count: using as two or more dwellings a building that was previously one, whether or not any construction is involved; depositing refuse or waste where the area or the height of the deposit is extended above the level of the adjoining land, even on land already used for that; using for advertisements an external part of a building not normally used for them; and converting or dividing property into plots.

Two things are now taken out of that requirement by statute. Law 179(I)/2025 added a proviso to section 3 which deems the planning permit to have been issued for an electricity storage installation combined with a renewable energy generating station whose own licences are already in hand, and for a data centre at that station on conditions set by Ministerial order under section 22, conditions which may not cap the installation's area. The sequence for a generation project is set out on our solar project page.

On the building side, section 3(1) of Cap. 96 forbids, without a permit obtained in advance from the appropriate authority, laying out or constructing a street; erecting a building, or suffering or permitting one to be erected; demolishing, rebuilding, altering, adding to or repairing an existing building, or suffering or permitting it; dividing land into separate plots; dividing a building into separate units; converting the approved use of a building, or permitting or suffering its conversion; and beginning any of those works. The words "suffer or permit" are the reason an owner who left the contractor to it is not outside the section.

Two clocks, then, and neither runs for as long as owners assume. Under section 28(2) of Law 90/1972 the validity of a planning permission is fixed by a condition suited to the nature and scale of the development, running from the date of notification of the grant, and where no such condition is imposed the permission lasts three years. Under section 28(3) it may be extended, on application or by the Planning Authority itself, for whatever period the Authority considers justified, provided the Development Plan provisions for the property are unchanged from the date of the original grant, or the development remains permitted after the Plan was amended. A proviso rewards the applicant who applies and then hears nothing: if the Planning Authority fails to answer an extension application within three months of receiving it, the approval is deemed to have been issued and the permission is extended by one year.

The building permit runs three years from issue under section 5(1) of Cap. 96, and where a planning permission covers the same works the appropriate authority may tie the building permit's life to it. Renewal is section 5(2): where a planning permission was granted under section 23 of Law 90/1972, the building permit is renewed for as long as that permission is renewed and valid under section 28; in every other case the permit is renewed only if, at the moment it expires, the works have begun but are not complete, are substantial, and are under active execution. A site that stopped is a site whose permit may not come back.

The last clock is the one most often missed, because it arrives when everyone thinks the job is over. Under section 10(1) nobody may occupy or use a building or part of one, or act so that another person does, until the appropriate authority has issued a certificate of approval, and that holds whether or not a permit was ever granted under section 3. Under section 10(2) the permit holder must notify the authority of completion and apply for the certificate within twenty-one days of the work being finished. Failing it is an offence under section 20(1) and, separately from any criminal liability, exposes the owner to an administrative fine under section 21(1), the designer to one under section 22 where the documents filed with the application are incomplete or wrong, and the supervising engineer to one under section 23(1) where the completion certificate is not filed within thirty days of the building being finished.