The town councils of Mallorca can now apply for the 40 million subsidies corresponding to the years 2024 and 2025.

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Plan of Works and Services for municipalities

The president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, has announced that, in the current legislature, the island institution will allocate nearly 80 million euros to the Municipal Works and Services Plan (POS), in its commitment to promote municipalism and strengthen local corporations. Galmés stated that “this is an unprecedented amount; never before has the Consell de Mallorca made this kind of investment in the island’s towns and villages through the Works and Services Plan”.

The Executive Council has already approved the call for applications for grants for the years 2024 and 2025 for an amount of 39.7 million euros: 19.8 million from this year’s budget and 19.8 million from next year’s accounts, doubling the investments of 9.5 million granted in 2023.

This was explained by President Galmés at the press conference in which he appeared alongside the councillor for Economic Promotion and Local Development, Pilar Amate, to announce the new features of the call for proposals, which is now open and open to all municipalities in Mallorca except Palma.

“We have made a great effort to increase these investments, because we are committed to strengthening municipalism and because we are fulfilling one of the main commitments of the government team. We want the residents of Mallorca to benefit from new infrastructures and works that the councils will be able to carry out, which will undoubtedly improve the quality of life of Mallorcans,” explained the president of the Consell de Mallorca.

For her part, Councillor Pilar Amate explained that “we have fulfilled our commitment to the mayors to publish the call for applications in the first quarter, and we also plan to meet our goal of paying the councils by June”.

As Amate explained, the main objective of his department has been “to speed up the deadlines and simplify the administrative procedures to gain in efficiency and, ultimately, so that municipal projects can become a reality as soon as possible”.

Main new features of the POS 2024 call for proposals

The total amount of the subsidy that local councils will receive for investment has been doubled: 960,000 euros will be allocated through the call for proposals to municipalities with up to 5,000 inhabitants; municipalities with 5,001 to 10,000 inhabitants will receive 700,000 euros; municipalities with 10,001 to 20,000 inhabitants will receive 520,000 euros and those with more than 20,000 inhabitants will receive a subsidy of 360,000 euros.

In addition, the number of actions that can be included in the subsidy for each municipality is also doubled, from 5 to 10. Specifically, up to 10 projects may be submitted in total, which may consist of the execution of works and the purchase of vehicles or buildings to provide municipal services. In addition, fees for the drafting of projects and works management, and for the drafting or updating of municipal civil protection plans may also be submitted for subsidy.

Likewise, the period of eligible actions has been extended to include expenses arising from projects starting from 1 January 2024 to 31 May 2026, without prejudice to the possibility of extensions of the deadline that may be granted to local councils to ensure that they can complete the works when they encounter difficulties that delay execution (contract awards that are not awarded, delays in sectoral reports, actions awarded after the initial date) as provided for in the call itself.

Another novelty of this call is the possibility of including, among the eligible actions, the case of construction of facilities related to Article 39 h) of the Animal Welfare Act.

Shorter times and greater flexibility

To shorten times and speed up the payment of subsidies, the application period is reduced from 2 months to 30 working days.
Likewise, to give more flexibility to the local councils in the execution, the modifications to the grant agreement expressly include the transfer of funds between actions, this option being a complement to the possibility of substituting actions, which remains the same as in the previous call for applications.

Finally, and to make it easier for local councils in the event of unforeseen situations, extraordinary extensions of deadlines are excluded from the ordinary deadline of 30 days before the end of the deadline required for ordinary extensions.