The curaduría urbana: what it is, which to choose, what it asks for

Almost everybody arrives at a curaduría urbana believing two things that are false: that it is a department of the town hall, and that they were given that one because it matches their address.

Neither is true. A curador urbano is a private individual exercising a public function, and, bar two exceptions, you choose which one.

What a curador urbano exactly is

The legal definition is short and worth reading slowly: a private individual charged with studying, processing and issuing permits for the parcelling, urbanisation, construction and subdivision of land, at the request of the applicant. And the office involves the exercise of a public function: verifying that the project complies with the planning and building rules in force.

Three consequences follow, and they order the whole relationship:

1. 1They are autonomous. They take no instructions from the town hall on how to resolve your case. And they are answerable in disciplinary, fiscal, civil and criminal terms for the harm they cause to users, to third parties or to the administration.
2. 2They do not interpret the rules. They verify that the project agrees with the rules in force. Only where there is no exactly applicable rule, or where two rules contradict each other, does the power to interpret pass to the municipal planning office, which exercises it by circular.
3. 3They are not your adviser. They review, they raise observations and they decide. Designing the project so that it complies is not their job, and confusing the two is the commonest cause of a procedure that drags on.

Which one to choose, and why you get to choose

The freedom to choose is not a custom: it follows from two written rules.

The first is jurisdiction. A curador urbano’s jurisdiction covers the whole territory of the municipality or district, save for the areas that the planning rules mark as unfit for urban development or subject to special restrictions. There are no curadores "by zone": every one of them can act across the whole municipality.

The second is allocation. The rule submits to compulsory allocation among the different curadores only two classes of application:

• —Those filed by state entities.
• —Those for individual social housing, filed by entities or by private persons.

If your case is neither of those two, there is no allocation to assign you anywhere. You file where you decide.

On what to look at when choosing, I offer this as professional judgement and not as rule: real response times, the support team’s experience with projects like yours, the clarity of the observation records they produce, and whether they work by electronic means. That last one is not a detail: the rule obliges them to enable electronic data transmission systems and to keep an electronic connection with the planning offices, and there are real differences between one office and another.

How the charges are assessed

The expensas are what the curador charges for providing the service: they cover the running costs of the office, the pay of the interdisciplinary team and the curador’s own remuneration. Since Decreto 1890 de 2021 they are assessed in Unidad de Valor Tributario, the indexed tax unit, and no longer in minimum wages as before.

The formula for parcelling, urbanisation and building permits combines five components:

On the fixed charge there are two rules worth knowing before you file: paying it is a condition for the application to be accepted, and it is not refunded if the permit is refused or if you withdraw.

The discounts that do exist

• —Social housing: 50%. The charges are assessed at half, by mandate of article 11 of Ley 810 de 2003, which the decree itself invokes.
• —Public community facilities: 50%. For every modality of building permit and for acts of recognition of public facilities for health, education and social welfare owned by public entities of any level.
• —Individual single-family or two-family social housing in strata 1, 2 and 3: a single charge of 8.34 UVT per dwelling unit, and assessed at 50% on top of that.
• —Adaptation with no execution of works: only the fixed charge is paid, and assessed at 50%.
• —Restoration, reconstruction, modification and structural strengthening: the charges are assessed on 30% of the area to be intervened.

The other procedures, with their rate

What they cannot charge you for

This is the part of the decree that gets cited least and saves the most money.

In other words: asking is free. What triggers a charge is the written ruling — on the planning rules or on land use — which is another thing and serves another purpose. Going to ask before commissioning a design costs nothing, and it is the step most projects skip.

And there are three more prohibitions, all in the same articles:

1. 1The charges are the only ones. They are regulated in the decree, assessed by the curador and paid by the applicant. There is no second list.
2. 2They cannot charge for other items. Until the Ministry of Housing approves by resolution charges for new procedures, curadores "may not make charges for items other than those established in the present decree, on pain of such liability as may arise from that conduct".
3. 3Nor fees on top of their remuneration, with one single exception provided by the rule: where the curador acts as independent reviewer of structural designs, in which case that remuneration is agreed separately.

Taxes are not charges

The most expensive confusion in the whole procedure. The taxes, levies, rates, participations and contributions attached to the permit — starting with the municipal urban delineation tax — are independent of the curaduría charges and are not paid to the curador.

But they do condition the permit: the curador may only issue it once the applicant proves the taxes were paid, and there are thirty working days from being required to do so. Within that same period the variable charge has to be paid to the curador.

And if your municipality has no curador

Many Colombian municipalities have no appointed curador. There the permit is issued by the competent municipal authority — normally the planning secretariat or directorate — and there is a direct economic consequence, written without ambiguity:

No curador, no charges. The municipal taxes remain, and they remain a requirement for the permit to be issued: it is not a free procedure, it is a procedure without that one component.

What documents it asks for

The base list is fixed by the Ministry of Housing by resolution, and the rule is blunt on one point worth keeping to hand: permits must be filed and resolved exclusively with the requirements fixed by that resolution. If you are asked for something that is neither there nor in the national, planning or heritage rules, ask where it comes from.

On top of that base, a building permit calls for:

1. 1The architectural project, titled and signed by an architect with professional registration, who thereby becomes legally responsible for the designs and for the information. It has to contain at least the location, plans, elevations or sections relating to the street, façades, roof plan and schedule of areas. If the plot slopes, the sections have to show the real slope of the ground.
2. 2The structural drawings, signed and titled by the professional who prepared them. In projects of greater complexity the calculation memorandum, the design memoranda for the non-structural elements and the geotechnical and soil surveys are added.
3. 3The earlier permits and their drawings, if the application is filed before an authority other than the one that granted the original. If they do not exist, recognition of the building has to be obtained first. This does not apply to new build.
4. 4The concept design approved by the heritage authority, if the property is listed cultural property.
5. 5The authorisation record of the competent body of the co-ownership, where the case is an extension, adaptation, modification, structural strengthening or demolition in a property under horizontal property, the Colombian condominium regime.

How the procedure runs, and where it gets stuck

1. 1Filing, which requires payment of the fixed charge. The time limits do not start running with filing as such, but when the application is filed in legal and due form. That distinction explains most of the deadlines that "were not met".
2. 2Site board and notice to neighbours. From the day after filing, a board has to go up, yellow background and black letters, at least 1.00 × 0.70 m, with a photograph of it annexed to the file within the following five working days, on pain of the application being deemed withdrawn. In parallel, the curador notifies the adjoining neighbours by certified post.
3. 3Review. Legal, planning, architectural and structural, including compliance with the NSR-10, the Colombian earthquake-resistant construction code, the structural designs, the geotechnical and soil surveys and the non-structural elements.
4. 4Record of observations and corrections. It is drawn up once only, where there is cause for it. If the applicant does not respond within the time limits, the application is deemed withdrawn and the file is closed.
5. 5Assessment of taxes and payment. Thirty working days, and without that payment there is no permit.
6. 6Issue. The legal time limit to rule is forty-five working days from the application, extendable by up to half as much again by reasoned decision. Once it expires with no ruling, positive administrative silence operates in the applicant’s favour.

What to do before filing

1. 1Go and ask. The verbal enquiry about planning rules in force is free by rule. Make it before commissioning the design, not after.
2. 2Ask for the schedule of rates. They have to keep it on display, and looking at it costs nothing. With the five components of the formula you can check the assessment you are handed.
3. 3Choose a curador on the merits, knowing you are going to stay with them for the extensions and modifications.
4. 4File complete. The record of observations is drawn up once only, and every correction cycle costs weeks.
5. 5Budget the taxes separately, and with cash available: they turn up late in the procedure and carry a short deadline.

All of the above is transcribed from the articles in force. The values run in UVT because that is how the rule sets them: their equivalent in pesos changes every year.