Special Urban Management Regime - REURB 2020 is approved and goes on to public discussion

The Municipal Executive approved the proposal for a Regulation to Reduce Urban Fees - REURB 2020 - a Special Regime that provides for the allocation of tax benefits and, simultaneously, aims to accelerate the appreciation of urban processes, by allowing, even in 2020, to avoid the postponement of scheduled or planned private property investments.

Under this Regime, all projects are eligible for fees, and may benefit from a 50% reduction for works, whose completion period does not exceed two years. The benefits also have an impact on the reduction of processing times, reduced by half, and for this purpose, all projects whose investment is equal to or greater than 1 million euros are considered.

It should be noted that REURB 2020 covers urban planning processes for licensing or prior communication of building works, urbanization works and some subdivisions (excluding PIPs, authorization for use, among others), whose payment of fees and collection of the (s) respective permit (s) to take place between March 14th and the end of calendar year of 2020. This special regime does not cover processes related to the legalization of works.

Under this new regime, a reduction of 50% of all settled urban fees is expected, except for the compensation fee, public domain occupation fees for the execution of the work, as well as traffic conditioning and police monitoring, according to the following terms:

a) The applicant pays all fees, and the benefit granted by bank transfer is returned at the end of the building work;

b) The return takes place at the request of the interested party, accompanied by the building work book and the term of responsibility of the work director or the inspection director, attesting the completion of the building work in accordance with the licensed project;

c) The beneficiary of the return will be the owner of the process at the date of completion of the building work;

d) The benefits will apply only if there is an absence of debts to the Municipality;

e) The benefit is merely applicable if the building work is completed by the end of 2022. This period can only be extended, at most for another year, by justified request, duly validated by the municipal urban services.

f) Buildings inserted in allotments, whose allotment permits have been issued and paid within the aforementioned period, and whose work is completed within the period provided for in the preceding paragraph, benefit from this reduction as well.

In light of REURB 2020, the time of appreciation and pronouncement of processes with higher works budgets are reduced to half of those legally provided for in the RJUE (Legal Regime for Urbanization and Building). In other words, four working days (instead of eight) for preliminary assessment, and 15 working days (30 in the RJUE) for decisions on architectural design and urbanization works. The deadlines for deciding on the license application (verification of specialty projects) are also reduced from 45 working days to just 22. The deadlines for issuing building and urban work permits are reduced to 15 days. These reductions in processing times will occur after the end of the emergency state and the restoration of normality in the work of municipal services.

REURB 2020 joins a series of measures previously approved by the Municipality, with the view of restoring the economic dynamism that has allowed Porto to project its image as an entrepreneurial city at a national and international level.