Victory before the Conseil d’Etat !

Case History :

A building permit was issued in December 2022 for the construction of 24 apartments (13 studios, 9 two-roomed, 2 three-roomed), 3 or 4 shops and 21 parking spaces on the plots opposite La Poste, to the left of the Pizzeria.

A building is planned for Av Marcellin Poncet and a building below on the main road.

A promise to sell was granted by the municipal team to a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole Immobilier on public land, without any consultation. The sale of the land depends on the definitive nature of the building permit, which we have challenged mainly for the following reasons:

• Felling of the 6 trees protected in the SPR regulations (Avap) and in the PLU. If the Town Hall claims to be able to transplant them, the planning permission stipulates that they will be "cut down".
• Deficit of 3 parking spaces for which no proof has been provided of the technical impossibility of creating them within the right-of-way of the operation
• Certain architectural rules not respected
• Additional documents submitted after the deadline, favoritism on the part of the petitioner...

Regardless of the legal rules, the City Council's intention to "house young people" is in no way guaranteed, since no obligation is imposed on the developer either in terms of the number of units to be retained or sold at retail, or in terms of sale or rental prices.

An inventory of vacant businesses and a report on the occupancy of the Pôle Médical is requested from the Mairie for this meeting, as the objective of the Pôle Médical housing to bring in families to populate the school does not appear to have been achieved.

A 50% quota for rental housing to be retained by Crédit Agricole or the Mairie would seem to us to be a minimum to guarantee the building's intended use.

We met with Crédit Agricole in March 2023 to explain our grievances. No concrete response has been forthcoming since then.

At first instance, the Planning Permission was partially annulled on the grounds of the lack of dedicated parking for shops.

The other arguments were dismissed on the grounds that the SPR was not applicable because the Town Hall had forgotten to publish it on the geoportail de l'urbanisme, an argument raised by the developer's lawyer.

This bad faith, given that the entire building permit claims to comply with the SPR, was the reason for the appeal.

The case is currently before the Conseil d'Etat, since the classification of Ménerbes as a ‘zone tendue d'Avignon’ (an area where it is necessary to build) from 2023 has removed the need for the Administrative Court of Appeal to speed up proceedings.

In June 2025, the Conseil d'Etat ruled in our favor, confirming the application of the SPR regulations!

The administrative court has been ordered to retry the case on the basis of these regulations.