Restricted work that needs to be done by professionals

Restricted building work must be done or supervised by a Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP). Find out when you can do restricted building work yourself.

If your building or renovation project needs a building consent, it’s likely to include some restricted building work.

Restricted building work is design or construction work that is structural or affects the weathertightness of a building.

It covers:

  • foundations
  • floors
  • walls
  • framing
  • roofing
  • cladding
  • external moisture-management systems
  • active fire safety systems (in small to medium-sized apartments).

Licensed Building Professionals (LBPs) are professionals approved by us who are qualified to carry out restricted building work. They include:

  • designers
  • carpenters
  • bricklayers and blocklayers
  • roofers
  • external plasterers
  • site and foundations specialists.

Chartered professional engineers aren’t LBPs, but they are licensed to supervise and undertake restricted building work.

Find an LBP

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 Practioners

When you apply for a building consent you’ll need to include a Memorandum a from an LBP, architect or engineer. This identifies all the restricted building work included in your project and the LBP that has carried out this design work.

Memorandum (Certificate of Design Work) (PDF 173 kb)

You are also 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 BC application form (Appendix A). 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.

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 this with your building consent application. Find out more about the obligations and responsibilities or owner-builders.

Note: This declaration will be recorded on the property file and will be visible to future buyers.

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