Short answer: as far as we can confirm, no, the Planning Amnesty Scheme closed to new applications on 23 June 2025. If you have unauthorised building work and were hoping to use it, you’ve likely missed the window, but you are not out of options. Here’s the current picture and what remains. Status check: This […]

Cyprus has introduced faster, designer-certified permit routes for straightforward projects. Where they apply, they can cut a lot of waiting one of them even issues the permit automatically if the authority misses its deadline. But they come with a strict eligibility list, and a single disqualifying feature on your plot puts you back on the

Buying a building for a different purpose than it was built for, a house you want to run as offices, or a ground-floor unit you want to turn into a café, sounds like a decorating job. Legally, it’s a change of use (Αλλαγή Χρήσης), and it needs permission. Here’s what’s actually involved, and where the

A planning permission is not permanent. It has a life, and if it expires before you build or before you take the next legal step, you can be left starting again. Worse, one very common assumption about extending a permit is flatly wrong, and it catches out owners and professionals alike. Here’s how validity actually

“It’s only small, surely I don’t need a permit?” It’s the most common assumption we hear, and it’s often wrong. This guide walks through the everyday jobs of an extra room, a pool, a fence, a pergola, a garden store, solar panels and tells you, in plain English, which need permission. First, two key ideas

This is one of the most-asked questions in Cypriot property and one of the most badly answered. You’ll find confident numbers online that are either out of date or quoted from a press release rather than the actual law. Here is the honest version, with the timeframes that are officially defined clearly separated from the

A plot in Cyprus can look perfect on a viewing and still be a poor place to build. What you can put on it, and whether you can build at all, is decided not by the view but by its zone, its title, and a handful of constraints that never show up in the estate-agent

If you are about to build, extend, or renovate in Cyprus, you will hear two terms used almost interchangeably: planning permission and a building permit. They are not the same thing. They are issued under different laws, they answer different questions, and you need both in the right order. Getting this wrong is the single

If you searched this question a couple of years ago, the answer was “the municipality” or “the District Planning Office.” As of 1 July 2024, that answer is wrong. Cyprus reorganised its local government, and the permit-issuing power moved. If you are planning to build, extend, or subdivide in the Larnaca district, here is who

Small structures a garden store, a tool shed, a small auxiliary building sit in the “surely not?” category, and the answer is: you still need a designer and a permit, but there’s a streamlined route for small ones. “Streamlined” is not the same as “none.” (This is one of the works in our main guide,