Dispute continues to rage in idyllic Spanish holiday town

Property experts and homeowners in the Spanish holiday town of Marbella are hoping for a quick resolution to a political conflict that has blighted thousands of homes and left building sites idle.

Many properties caught in the planning dispute between the local and regional authorities are owned by overseas investors and holiday-home owners.

According to estate agent Hamptons International, 28,000 homes are under dispute because they were built in line with Marbella town council plans that were rejected by the Junta de Andalucia, the regional body that has overall authority for planning. The two sides have formed a committee to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, the effect on the property market has been to make disputed homes unsellable and increase the value of unaffected properties.

Hamptons said the dispute had had a huge impact on the town because much of it had been built illegitimately. Francis Jacobson, Mar-bella-based company surveyor at Hamptons International, said: 'The population of Marbella is 116,000, not including holiday-home owners, but even if you had twice as many people, then 28,000 homes would still be a big figure.'

Every four years local municipalities in Spain must devise a plan that requires regional council approval. The dispute centres on Marbella's 1991 local plan, which redesignated some rural land as urban. After provisionally accepting the plan in 1995, the Junta de Andalucia officially rejected it three years later. Marbella's town council refused to accept the decision.