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Duration: 3.13
“A lot of building work needs licensed people on the job … right?”
Yes! You’re right.
You may need a Licensed Building Practitioner if the work you’re planning affects the basic structure of your home, or the weathertightness of your home.
This video tells you when you need a Licensed Building Practitioner (or LBP), what is an LBP, how to find them and why they’re important for homes that are safe, healthy and built to last.
OK, let’s start with when you need to use a Licensed Building Practitioner. Generally, you’ll need an LBP for the bigger or more complicated jobs, usually the ones that need a building consent from your council. This includes work affecting your home’s primary structure or weathertightness. This could be foundations, framing, roofing, cladding or more.
If your work includes either of these it could be Restricted Building Work meaning you must get LBPs to either carry out or supervise the work because, by law, only an LBP is licensed to do it.
This work is critical to the warmth, safety, value and insurability of your home. In fact, it’s so important to use the right people, you could face fines of up to $20,000 if you use someone who’s not an LBP to do or supervise this work.
So what is a Licensed Building Practitioner? LBPs are assessed before getting licensed, and have to maintain their skills and knowledge to keep this licence. They include designers, carpenters and builders, roofers, brick and blocklayers, external plasterers, foundation layers and site co-ordinators.
You can check if the people you have are LBPs by asking to see their LBP ID card, which looks like this [shows card with photo, expiry date and licence class]. And visit our website building.govt.nz/lbp to find out more and see if there are on the LBP register.
Remember, it’s your responsibility to ensure you use LBPs when you need to. Bottom line, your home is one of your biggest investments, so you always want to make sure you have the right people on every job … right?
So, to Build It Right, go to building.govt.nz/lbp to:
1. understand if you need an LBP
2. if you do, check they’re on the register
3. ask to see their LBP ID card.
