Does a shop or warehouse fit-⁠out need a building permit?

Short answer: usually yes. If your fit-out builds, moves or removes anything fixed to the building — walls, ceilings, toilets, a kitchen, a mezzanine — it is building work under the Building Act 1993, and it needs a building permit unless the Building Regulations 2018 exempt it. This guide is for tenants and shopfitters working out which side of the line a job sits on before the lease clock starts.

Building work or cosmetic work?

Cosmetic work does not need a permit: paint, floor coverings, window film, loose furniture, shelving that stands on the floor, and joinery that can be unscrewed and carried out the door.

Building work changes the building itself. The usual fit-out triggers:

• Partition walls and ceilings — new or removed walls, a suspended ceiling or bulkhead.
• Amenities — a kitchen, toilets, showers, anything with plumbing.
• Exits and paths of travel — blocking, narrowing or relocating an exit, or walling across the path to one.
• Fire services — moving sprinkler heads, exit signs, emergency lights or fire doors, or cutting through a fire-rated wall or floor.
• Mezzanines — a new floor level, including one supported on pallet racking. Suppliers sometimes call these exempt. The Regulations exempt nothing that adds floor area, so we have not seen one that was.
• Structure — a new opening in a load-bearing wall, extra slab load, roof penetrations for exhaust.

A narrow exemption in Schedule 3 of the Building Regulations 2018 covers alterations that leave structural soundness, floor area and height untouched, do not affect the safety of the public or occupants, do not touch or affect an essential safety measure, and are not on a heritage-registered building. A change of use sits outside it altogether. If your work is genuinely limited to that, we will tell you for free.

Change of use and classification

Every commercial building has an NCC classification — Class 6 for shops and cafés, Class 5 for offices, Class 7 or 8 for warehouses and factories, Class 9b for places of assembly. The occupancy permit records the class and the use. Turning a warehouse into a gym or an office into a café changes the class, and with it the rules for exits, fire separation, amenities, access and ventilation.

Under regulation 229 of the Building Regulations 2018 a building cannot change use until it meets the rules for the new use, and occupying it against the current occupancy permit is an offence. In practice that means a building permit for the upgrade works and a new occupancy permit recording the new use, even when the fit-out is modest. A change within the same class — a shop becoming a café — can still shift the permitted use and amenities, so tell us. It may also need a planning permit from council, which runs alongside ours, not instead of it.

Occupancy permits

You cannot open on the building permit alone. Under section 21 of the Building Act 1993 an occupancy permit is required for all building work unless the building surveyor decides the work is minor or does not affect the building’s suitability for occupation; then the job ends with a certificate of final inspection instead. A new kitchen, new amenities, a mezzanine or a change of use is not minor.

Essential safety measures

Sprinklers, hydrants, exit signs, emergency lighting, fire doors and smoke detection are the building’s essential safety measures. The occupancy permit lists them, and under Part 15 of the Building Regulations 2018 the owner must keep them working and prepare an annual essential safety measures report. A fit-out that adds, moves or covers any of them changes the list: a new occupancy permit carries the updated list, and a job that ends in a certificate of final inspection gets a maintenance determination with it. A building from before July 1994 may have no occupancy permit at all; the measures it was built with must still be maintained and reported on each year, and a maintenance schedule can be prepared to pin down what they are.

Accessibility

Building work on a commercial building brings the Disability (Access to Premises — Buildings) Standards 2010 into play: the new work must meet current access requirements, and so must the “affected part” — the main entrance and the path from it to the new work. New or relocated toilets usually mean an accessible toilet, doorways need clear widths, and a step at the shopfront can become your problem. Where a tenant in a multi-tenancy building lodges the application, the Standards do not require the entrance and common path to be upgraded; a single-tenant building gets no such relief. Raise it at sketch stage.

Landlord or tenant?

The lease decides who pays and who organises. The permit application is made by or on behalf of the building owner, so a tenant applying needs the landlord’s sign-off. The occupancy permit belongs with the building; the landlord should hold a copy regardless of who paid. Work that needed a permit and did not get one surfaces at make-good, at sale, or when the fire brigade inspects — and the owner carries it.

What to send for a quote

1. Floor plans of the existing and proposed layouts, even as sketches.
2. The existing occupancy permit and essential safety measures list — ask the landlord or managing agent.
3. A few lines on the use: what the space is now and what it will be.
4. Engineering for any mezzanine, new opening or racking-supported structure.
5. For food premises, the kitchen exhaust and grease arrestor design.

We come back with a fixed fee covering assessment, the building permit, inspections and the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection. See our commercial fit-out permits page for how the job runs.