Does any of my fellow Eye On Spain members have any experience of an ENTIDAD URBANISTICA DE CONSERVACIÓN .

I am particularly interested in the relationship between it and it's component communities.

Is it a white elephant or a cash cow for the administration?

An entidad embraces several separate communities to pay for such items as street lighting ,, road maintenance etc.

Each community will have its own quota based on area of land. Get together with other communities, agree your budget and decicide to instruct an administrator, this is cushy work for an administrator. the one problem is if one comminity is greater than 50% then they can dictate.

Each individual owner is entitled to vote but for simplicity community presidents are normally expected to represent their communities.

noddy

But is this not really the responsibility of town halls?

i think the idea is is that communities take more control of their own infrastructure. Yes it is a form of tax but the fees are agreed by the communities involved and paid into entitad account not the council.

noddy

but considering the fees paid for the building licences and the fact that owners pay rates then it should be to the town hall to provide these services.

I remember coming across this in relation to Casares a year or two ago.

We pay it on Club de campo de golf Valle del Este - general maintenance of the urbanisation.

( As well as our own community fees ) they don't empty the bins though - that's another cost as well as the local council tax etc etc. the list is fairly endless really.

Kerching, Kerching, Kerching

I'm also on Valle del Este

Community fees €60 per month

Entidad €13 per month

Council Tax €224 a year including underground parking and storage

Basura €35 per quarter

About €105 per month, for whats there is stunning value.

Compare that to a managed flat in the Thames Valley!!!!!!!

 It's interesting to see the cost of having an Entidad. Ours is potentially 500k euros to be paid by appx 800 units (Houses/plots) in 5 communities and sundry other owners.

How are the fees levied?

Are they charged directly from the entidad to the individual owner or are they charged to the community to collect and pay?

 Our Entidad budget has now reached 1 mill euros for 1200 properties on many communities from apartments, townhouses and villas and debtors are very high.

We are now billed directly from the Entidad but first year was collected by Administrator along with community fees, never sure which is correct method, any thoughts?

Entidad fee for the year on 2 bed apartment approx 560 euros

Community fees approx 1000 euros

Local IBI from memory 300 euros

Central taxes approx 150

I think around 2000 euros pa is rather high

Original marketing indicated 50 per month for fees

Also surprising we pay both Entidad and IBI as Entidad covers security, bins and road cleaning

 We are in the process of being constituted.

I am a community president and I, like the owners, have never had the process explained - knowledge is power.

Our Entidad statutes seem to indicate that if an owner in a community is in debt to the entidad then the community looses it's vote on the Enitad. So to my mind it makes sense for the community to collect the money and that way it can have control over the debtors.

Question for David W from Valle del Este,

We too are just about to have our Estatutes published, (this Wednesday) how do we go about selecting the board and President? Do we select the board at the general assembly and then select a President from those board members or do we select a President and he/she choses their board.?

Confused

Strictly speaking, each individual should pay into the entity based omn the community quota x percentage that community has within your entity.

to pay through community, this needs to be agreed at community agm, and needs unaminous support. it is a better way and should result in much lower administration costs as there are less payments to deal with.

it is also best to vote at your community agm that your president represents you all hence have your percentage vote. this does not stop individuals turning up and having a say but the last thing you want is thousands of owners from lots of communities turning up.

probably the committee should consist of presidents of the communities with higher percentage voting rights. if one community has overall majority ( over 50% ) this can cause problems.

good luck, bear in mind entities are just an extra tax and way that the council can offload some of its responsibilities.

nick

N,

Assuming all communities within the urbanisation are, at the initial general assembly,  represented by their president and all villa owners are there or a representative for them, how did you go about selecting the board/president? What 'order of service' is normal?

M

ours was new development of 4 communities so all presidents knew each other and were in agreement to keeop developer 35% quota out.

suggest the big communities find out who the presidents are and talk before hand but essential they represent their entire community. one of the community administrators will be looking to be appointed entity administrator,

could be issues if some predominantly english and some spanish.

suggest get your administrator to arrange pre meeting.

i think your entity fees should nbe minimal to start with, eg ours are about 15% of community fees as only street lights and general maintenance. do not agree budget without checking it. the administrator will want same rate as community rate but you appoint secretary /treasurer and basically they do little so about half rate would be fair.

Nick

Most of the communties are in touch with each other and getting along well. We have had several meetings over the last year or so to expand our understanding of how an EUC works, we are ok with that.

What none of us understand is the process for electing the EUC board/president. We know that those who which to put their names forward need to do so up to 4 days or whatever before the general assembly, it's from there that we would like to know the process.

m

i believe you just elect a president as well as treasurer, secretary ( normally an administrator. you can also elect committee similar to community, suggest each president puts himself up to be a member thus giving each urbanisation representation. probably one independent villa owner for the villas.

ideally the community presidents should carry the full quota for their communities. best if you all meet up before hand so you al;l vote en block. we were lucky, the same administrator for all communities so no conflict and budget which will be need to be voted on already privately agreed.

strictly speaking this is an individual charge but at our agm we give the president power to have our vote to prevent chaos

if any of you have agm before hand suggest to add on to the agenda this item

voting happens in the usual way, and you need also to agree amongst yourselves the best admin people

Nick

N,

Thank you for all your help with this, much appreciated.

M

 http://www.eyeonspain.com/blogs/costaluz/3428/legal-tip-265-duty-of-maintenance-of-infraestructure-works.aspx

M,

Thank you.

M

 mwells

Normally an Entidad Constitution will be drawn up by the developer and the Town Hall, as has been stated, it is a way for the Town Hall to deflect some of the costs they may normally bear on to the owners who take on the Entidad responsibilities once the devloper ceases paying for services.

The statutes setting out the number of board members and period of office, in our case it was 4 years, should be in place and owners should present themslves as President or Board members for those represented to elect.

Though an Entidad Board should theoretically represent all Communities, having all Presidents in place, this is not necessarily the case as it is a public body not governed by HPA.

Ensure debtors are not permitted from remaining on the Board and ensure the Board either themselves or through the Administrator find a way of informing all owners of their regular meetings and decisions, though like a Community, the budget and major decisions should be made by all owners at an AGM