Can you build or not: check the detailed regulation plan
| 19 March 2010 - Comments (0) | Procedures |
One of the 6 things that you should check before buying a land in Belgrade, is if and what you are allowed to build on that land. For that, you can use online tools or ask for the location information in the Secretariat for Urban Planning and Construction. You will be able to obtain information for building only in the case a detailed regulation plan exists for the area where is the land. (updated version)
Location information and urban plan excerpt
In the new law on planning and construction passed in summer 2009, the formal urban plan excerpt has been replaced by a non formal document called the location information. This new document more or less provides the same information as the urban plan excerpt but is not a compulsory document anymore. There are other ways to get information about a location, most notably using online tools.
The location information is only compulsory in the case of a request for building an auxiliary object, a garage or a small electrical substation.
Detailed regulation plans
All of Belgrade is covered by the Master Plan of Belgrade to 2021 prepared by the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade. It was adopted by the Assembly of the City of Belgrade on September 27, 2003.
Master Plan of Belgrade to 2021 (source Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade).
The Master Plan gives the general directions and conditions of Belgrade's development. Based on that general plan, detailed regulation plans have to be done for each part of Belgrade, to specify, down to the individual plot of land, the conditions and the rules for constructions. The making of those detailed regulation plans is a work in progress. For some parts of Belgrade, it is already done, while for some other parts (the outskirts of Belgrade for instance) it is yet to be done.
detailed regulation plans = detailed urban plans
Note that detailed regulation plans done before the adoption of the new Master Plan of Belgrade in 2003, were called detailed urban plans. So “detailed regulation plans” and “detailed urban plans” are two terms for more or less the same thing.
The main difference is that, because detailed urban plans were done before the adoption of the Master Plan, they sometimes do not respect the new regulations thus creating problems for their application.
Example of a detailed regulation plan in Vračar near the Cathedral of Saint Sava (source Beoland).
Finding out information
On the Internet
The new law on planning and construction clearly states that all planning documents will be centralized and made available on-line over the Internet (Articles 42 and 43). In the meantime, the Land Development Agency (Beoland) has an excellent online tool that we describe in a specific article. From this tool, you can download all detailed regulation plans, that have been passed after 2003, in PDF format.
If you can find the detailed regulation plan in which your land is located online, you will get all of the necessary information you need to proceed for the location permit. In that case, you do not need the location information document. Yet that document might be useful to get the technical conditions before the location permit for a given building project on the land.
If you cannot find the detailed regulation plan in which your land is located online, you need to ask for the location information document.
Obtaining the location information document
To obtain the location information document, you need to go to the Secretariat for Urban Planning and Construction and fill a request. They only work with clients 2 hours in the afternoon, from 14:00 to 16:00, each weekday, except Friday.
Together with the request, the copy of the plan of the cadastral parcel (that you can get from the Republic Geodetic Authority) has to be submitted. There is a small administrative tax to pay for the request of the location information that covers the real cost of issuing it. By law, the Secretariat for Urban Planning and Construction should issue the location information within 8 days after the request.
Can you build or not?
Yes if a detailed regulation plan exists for the area where is the land
If the land is covered with a detailed regulation plan, the location information will contain all the necessary information needed to start architectural planning of the building project. It contains the purpose of the land, position of roads and infrastructure, regulation construction lines, construction coefficients and so on.
The location information also states whether or not an urbanism project is needed to form a construction plot. That can happen, for instance, if the land doesn't have direct access to a public road or if there is a correction of the borders of the land to perform.
No if there is no detailed regulation plan for the area where is the land
If the land is not covered with an existing detailed regulation plan, the location information will contain the exact timeline for the realization of that detailed plan. The location information will also explicitly states the interdiction to build new objects or reconstruct existing ones until the adoption of that new detailed plan.
In that case, you will have to wait the adoption of the detailed regulation plan in order to be able to build.
