Restricted building work must be done or supervised by a Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP). Find out what constitutes restricted building work and when you can do restricted building work yourself.
Restricted Building Work
Prior to making an application for a building consent you should check whether that work includes restricted building work (RBW). RBW includes the design or construction of work that is structural or has an impact on the weathertightness of a building. RBW covers:
- foundations
- floors
- walls
- framing
- roofing
- cladding
- external moisture-management systems
- active fire safety systems (in small to medium-sized apartments).
Download our information sheet on Restricted Building Work (PDF 38kb).
Licensed Building Practitioners
If your building project includes RBW then that work must be carried out by a Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP). LBPs are professionals, approved by a Registrar and listed on a public register, who are qualified to carry out restricted building work. They include:
- designers
- carpenters
- bricklayers and blocklayers
- roofers
- external plasterers
- site and foundations specialists.
New Zealand Registered Architects and Chartered Professional Engineers are automatically treated as LBPs in the design class. This means that they can design and undertake restricted building work.
There is a public register of Licensed Building Practitioners, and you can search this public register of Licenced Building Practitioners to:
- find a Licenced Building Practitioner
- check that a person is licensed
- view a Building Practitioner's licence history
- find out if a Licenced Building Practitioner has been disciplined in the last three years.
Under section 307 of the Building Act 2004, you can’t use the information in this register for any other purpose. If you do, you are breaching the Privacy Act 2020.
If you do not know how to spell the building practitioner’s name, you can do a wildcard search by entering the first three letters and %. For example, to find Smith you can enter Smi%.
Tell us who is doing the work
Once you've found an LBP, you must let us know by filling out the form below before any work gets started.
Advice of Licensed Building Practitioners
You are required to notify us of the LBP who will be doing or supervising the restricted building work. If you know this before you apply, you can include it in the building consent application form. If not, you must notify us before the building work is carried out, by email or phone.
If you don’t know them, it’s your responsibility as the homeowner to check – before you start the work – that the people you’re using to supervise or do restricted building work have the relevant licenses.
When you apply for a building consent you’ll need to include a Certificate of Design Work a from an LBP, architect or engineer. This identifies all the restricted building work included in your project and the LBP who has carried out this design work.
When you can do restricted building work yourself (the owner-builder exemption)
If you are a home-owner and you want to carry out restricted building work yourself, or with the help of family and friends, you can apply for an owner-builder exemption.
You must complete a statutory declaration and provide it for a building consent application. Find out more about the obligations and responsibilities for owner-builders.
Note: This declaration will be recorded on the property file and will be visible to future buyers.
Contact details
- Email: contact@huttcity.govt.nz
- Telephone: +64 04 570 6666 | 0800 488 824