Firstly, VPO’s are council houses or government subsidized housing, and we’re referring to the ones on La Caleta N-340 road junction.

These terraced houses were never finished and the construction company is in receivership, leaving couples who had put down deposits on them high and dry.

However, the Salobreña Town Hall has a bank guarantee belonging to the company, which was deposited when work first began – this is the money that is going to be used to improve the footpaths running alongside the housing, down to the Casa de la Cultura of La Caleta.

The Mayor, Gonzalo Fernandez Pulido, makes it clear that the bank deposit does not correspond to the actual building of the houses, but a bank guarantee left for the maintenance of the streets and pathways on the site.

In other words, when a construction company builds housing they must leave a deposit that will be used should public rights of way (streets) suffer damage from heavy machinery/vehicles, etc.

It takes time for a town hall to go through the legal procedure to confiscate such a bank deposit after a construction company defaults, which is why the work hasn’t begun sooner, despite strong local demand for safer pavements etc at this access point for La Caleta.

The works, which should be completed within two months, include the said pavements along the access road from the main-road junction down to the Casa de la Cultura, as well as to the VPO’s themselves, the clearing of the wasteland behind them and the bricking up of the empty houses.

(News: La Caleta, Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)