How long does the council have to respond to you? The law says up to 90 days — on Queixate some complaints closed in 3.5 days and one went past 90.

TL;DR

• When you report a problem to the council, you are not asking for a favour: you are exercising a right. Public authorities have a duty to decide on matters put to them by citizens — they cannot simply ignore them.
• The Code of Administrative Procedure (CPA) sets, as a general rule, a deadline of 90 days for the conclusion of proceedings and the corresponding decision. That is the legal ceiling — not the time a simple repair should take.
• Data from Queixate itself shows both sides. Of the five complaints already resolved or closed on the platform as of 18 September 2026, three were handled in 3.5 to around 10 days — but the other two took around 41 and around 174 days, and the latter went past the 90-day legal ceiling. When a report reaches the right department, the response can be swift; when it does not, it drags on.
• The difference between waiting months and resolving in a week is, more often than not, neither the law nor the council's goodwill — it is the channel. A rant on social media does not start any clock; a formal report directed to the council does.
• Knowing the deadline changes the conversation: it shifts from "will they ever reply?" to "the clock is running — and I have a way to track it."

The starting point: the council is required to respond to you

There is a deeply held belief that writing to the council is like throwing a piece of paper into a well. That is not quite right — at least not as far as the law is concerned. When a citizen submits a request, a statement or a complaint about a matter within the municipality's remit, the Public Administration has a duty to decide: it is required to rule on what is being asked of it, and to do so within a deadline.

This is not a legal technicality for specialists. It is the foundation of the entire relationship between those who pay taxes and those who manage public space. The pothole in the road, the faded pedestrian crossing, the overflowing bin that has been left for weeks — all of these are matters on which the council must decide what to do, as soon as the information reaches it in a form that can be processed. Prolonged silence is not the norm set out in law; it is the failure that the law seeks to prevent.

The legal ceiling: up to 90 days — but that is not the "normal"

How long, then? The Code of Administrative Procedure, which governs how the Administration handles citizens' requests, establishes as a general rule a deadline of 90 days for the conclusion of proceedings and the decision, unless a specific deadline applies to the case in question.

This figure deserves careful reading, because it is easy to misinterpret in both directions.

On one hand, 90 days is the maximum limit, not the target. It is the deadline within which a procedure — which may involve analysis, inspection, budgeting and procurement — must be decided. Replacing a road sign, scheduling the repainting of a pedestrian crossing or arranging the collection of a pile of rubble are not processes that need 90 days; they are maintenance tasks that, properly routed, are resolved within days.

On the other hand, 90 days is a very long time for someone who lives with the problem every day. And that is precisely why it matters to report early and be able to track progress: the deadline only starts working in the citizen's favour when there is a dated record. Without a record, no deadline is running — there is only a complaint floating in the air that nobody is required to account for.

What the data shows: fast in three cases, months in the other two

This is where it gets interesting for anyone who wants to know what happens in practice, not just on paper. We looked at complaints that had already been resolved through Queixate — the cases where the council recorded the situation as handled — and measured how much time passed between the report and the resolution.

The picture is mixed, and it is worth setting it out with the numbers alongside. Of the five complaints already resolved or closed as of 18 September 2026, three were handled quickly — within 3.5 to around 10 days of being reported. The other two took far longer: one was marked closed around 41 days after the report, and another was only resolved around 174 days later — past the 90-day legal ceiling. We are not offering an average: with five cases and a spread of this order between them, an average would describe none of them. For the same reason we draw no conclusions by type of problem — some categories have a single resolved case, and one case is not a pattern.

It is important to be honest about the scale: Queixate is still getting started, and we are talking about a very small number of resolved cases spread across several municipalities. This is not a national survey, and we are not presenting it as one. What these five cases show are the two extremes, and both say the same thing from opposite ends: when a concrete problem reaches the right department, with a description and a location, the council can act within days — and when the report never gets routed, the legal deadline can run out with nothing happening. The obstacle, in most cases, is not the capacity to resolve — it is the information never arriving in a usable form.

What changes when you know the deadline — and file a report

Knowing that a deadline exists transforms the attitude of the person raising the complaint. It stops being a tentative request, left to chance, and becomes the start of a procedure with rules. There are three concrete things you can do to make that deadline work in your favour:

1. File a report instead of venting. A comment on a social media page may relieve the frustration, but it does not oblige anyone to act and leaves no trace that counts towards any deadline. A formal report directed to the council, with a date, is what sets the clock ticking.
2. Be specific — what and where. A clear description and a precise location are what allow the council to route the matter to the right department first time. That is the difference between three days and three months: not the law, but the routing.
3. Track it. Keeping the record lets you know whether and when the matter was dealt with — and, if the deadline expires without a response, gives you proof that the problem was reported and went unanswered. A trackable report is worth far more than ten complaints that disappeared.

This is precisely what Queixate is for: turning a public-space problem into a formal report directed to the right council, with a date and the ability to track progress. It does not replace the council or do the work for it — it gives the council the information it needs to fulfil what the law already requires of it.

From bystanders to people who hold others to account

The next time you notice a problem on your street and think "this is pointless, they never reply", it is worth remembering two things. First, the council does have a duty to respond, and it has deadlines to do so. Second, the cases already resolved on Queixate show that, when properly directed, a concrete problem can be handled in a week — and that, without that routing, the same problem can drag on past the 90 days the law allows.

What is almost always missing is not the right or the capacity to resolve. It is the report that connects the problem to whoever can fix it, and the follow-up that stops it from getting lost along the way.

If there is an unresolved situation on your street, file a report at queixate.pt. It is anonymous, it is free and it takes under two minutes. The council's deadline only runs in your favour if there is a report keeping count.