Article 5 of the Saudi Municipalities Law

This article is the list of a municipality's tasks. It makes the municipality responsible for all work relating to organizing, improving and beautifying its area and preserving public health, comfort and safety, and it may take the necessary measures for that, particularly in fields that include:

• Planning and building: organizing the town under an urban plan approved by the competent bodies, licensing and monitoring buildings, structures and public and private utility lines, and demolishing buildings that are about to collapse or their dilapidated parts.
• Cleanliness and health: the cleanliness and appearance of the town, gardens and parks, protection of public health and warding off the danger of floods.
• Markets and consumers: monitoring food and consumer goods and their prices, monitoring weights and measures jointly with the competent bodies, and establishing markets and slaughterhouses.
• Licenses: licensing the practice of crafts and professions and the opening of public premises, and monitoring them for health and technical compliance, and designating locations for street vendors.
• Property and fees: expropriating real estate for the public benefit, setting and collecting fees and fines from those who violate its regulations, and preventing and removing encroachment on its property.
• Other services: cemeteries, washing facilities and burial of the dead, protection of archaeological buildings, local transport, stray animals, and any competence for which a decision is issued by the Council of Ministers.

The opening of the article limits this with the phrase 'without prejudice to what the regulations provide as a general competence of certain departments or agencies'; so if another law gives a competence to another body, it remains with that body. Many of the items are exercised by the municipality jointly or by agreement with the competent bodies, such as monitoring weights, organizing local transport and fire fighting.

Article 6 distributes these powers between the municipal council, which exercises the power of decision and oversight, and the head of the municipality, who exercises the power of execution. Anyone with a dispute with a municipality over a license, demolition or expropriation should consult a lawyer specialized in administrative or real estate cases.