Restricted building work
Building design and building work can be complex. In many cases having design and building professionals doing the work for you can take away a lot of stress that can arise during a building project. If you’re building or renovation project relates to work on a residential building, it's likely to include some restricted building work.
Restricted building work is design and/or building work that must be performed or supervised by a licensed building practitioner. Restricted building work is design or construction work that is structural or affects the weather tightness of the building. It covers elements such as:
- foundations
- floors
- walls
- framing
- roofing
- cladding
- external moisture-management systems
- active fire safety systems (in small to medium-sized apartments).
Licensed
Building Practitioners
The Building Act places an obligation on the building owner to ensure (before you start the work) that people carrying out certain building work have an appropriate license.
You must use an Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP) to design or carry out restricted building work. An LBP must do or supervise this work. They must work within the scope of their licence class. LBPs are licensed by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. They include:
- designers
- carpenters
- bricklayers and blocklayers
- roofers
- external plasterers
- site and foundations specialists.
Each LBP, designer or engineer needs to supply a Memorandum (Certificate of Design Work) (Form 2A) to include in your building consent application. This memorandum identifies the restricted building work that they have either designed or supervised.
For further information visit the Licensed Building Practitioners website.
Owner builder obligations
When you can do restricted building work yourself
This exemption provides owner-builders or do-it-yourself builders (DIY) a mechanism to undertake restricted building work on their own homes or use a friend or family member to either assist or undertake the works on their behalf.
You are an owner-builder if you:
- Have a relevant interest in the land or the building on which the restricted building work is carried out (i.e. ownership)
- Live in or are going to live in the home (includes a bach or holiday home)
- Carry out restricted building work to your own home yourself, or with the help of your unpaid friends and family members, and
- Have not, under the owner-builder exemption, carried out restricted building work to any other home within the previous three years.
You must either own (or jointly own with another person) or have a beneficial legal interest in the land and/or house the building work is being carried out on. A legal interest includes being a beneficiary of a trust, shareholder of a company, co-owner of Maaori land, or having possession of a long-term lease.
To meet the criteria, you must also genuinely intend to occupy (or already occupy) the house and not be building (or altering) it only to sell it or rent it to someone else. However, occupation does not need be permanent or exclusive, it is sufficient for you to reside on an intermittent basis e.g. a holiday home.
An owner-builder exemption does not cover works such as electrical, gas-fitting or plumbing and drainage work unless the owner-builder holds appropriate licenses for this type of work.
If an owner builder claims an exemption under the Licensed Building Practitioners scheme, you must complete the Owner builder statutory declaration. The statutory declaration must be held on the Land Information Register so that future owners are made aware that the design or construction of the dwelling has been undertaken by an owner builder.