As at 10 October 2026, Tasmania’s Residential Building Consumer Guide (July 2024) says some kinds of building work may be done only by a licensed builder, building designer or building surveyor, and that not every type of building work needs one: paving, concreting, painting and landscaping are its examples. People doing plumbing, gas and electrical work must be licensed too.
General informationDotto is not a builder, tradesperson or property manager. Dotto holds no builder’s or trade licence. It does not do, offer, contract for or arrange any building, trade or maintenance work, and does not refer anyone to a tradesperson. This is general information, not advice.
CBOS’s work passed on 1 October 2026 to Building Standards Tasmania and Consumer Affairs Tasmania; pages that still name CBOS mean those two agencies. Consumer Affairs Tasmania publishes the builder licence rules, and either agency is the place to check a particular job.
Repairs an owner may do
Building Standards Tasmania’s consumer page (last updated 1 July 2024) sets out what an owner may do without a building permit. Under that heading, it says that as an owner you:
- may do general maintenance and repair work around the home
- may put up fences, low decks, farm sheds and carports, though some larger projects must be done by a licensed builder even where no building permit is needed
- may have a licensed builder put up larger structures where no building permit is required.
Behind that list sits the Building Act 2016, which sorts building approval by risk, so some building work can be done without a permit or a building surveyor. When a builder is engaged, the same page is plain that the builder must hold a current licence to build in Tasmania.
How a builder’s licence is divided
Consumer Affairs Tasmania’s builder licence page (last updated 5 August 2026) says the category is split into three classes of licensed builder, each divided again into subclasses that set the type and size of work the holder may do. The General Construction class includes a Domestic subclass.
- Class 1, 2 and 10A Builder Domestic licence covers work on these National Construction Code classes of building.
- Area of competenceEvery licensed building service provider must act only within the skills they are qualified, experienced and able to use.
So a licence is not a single permission. The question for a repair is whether the work needs a licence at all, and then whether the holder’s class and subclass cover it.
Holding out and offering
The Occupational Licensing Act 2005 is the law behind these licences, and its section 38 makes two kinds of claim offences.
Claiming to be what you are not
A person must not hold themselves, or anyone else, out as a practitioner, a building services provider or a contractor when that is not the case.
Offering a contract for prescribed work
A person must not represent that they, or anyone else, are prepared to contract to carry out prescribed work “unless the intended contractor holds a contractor’s licence of the relevant occupation and class”.
“Prescribed work” is defined by the regulations: it is work usually done in the course of an occupation the Act applies to, that the regulations make prescribed work, and that they do not exclude. That is how the law draws its line in Tasmania: by listing kinds of work, not by setting a price.
The $20,000 figure belongs to contracts
Tasmania does have a $20,000 figure, and it is not a licence line. The Residential Building Work Contracts and Dispute Resolution Act 2016 sets standards for residential building contracts, and ways to settle disputes over them, where the work is valued at $20,000 or more. The work it covers includes renovations, alterations, extensions, improvements and repairs.
The consumer guide itself was written to help owners having residential building work done whose contract price is at least $20,000. Its first piece of advice, before any contract is signed, is to make sure the building contractor is licensed as a builder in Tasmania.
Plumbing, gas and electrical work
The licence for those trades is separate from a builder’s. The consumer guide says practitioners doing plumbing, gas and electrical work need licences of their own. Building Standards Tasmania’s register of licensed tradespeople shows only current licence holders.