Permits and licenses in Fredericton

The short version

Permits are the City’s way of making sure the deck you built holds people up, the wiring behind your drywall will not cook your house, and the corner lot beside you does not quietly become a scrapyard. They exist for safety and for livability, yours, your neighbours’, and whoever owns the place after you. They are also, if we are honest, the part of a home project people most love to skip. Try not to. The bill for skipping is almost always larger than the permit.

Fredericton runs its permits and licenses through one online front door, Access Fredericton (accessfredericton.ca/CitizenAccess), where you apply, pay, upload drawings, and track inspection status from a password-protected account. Some things, notably dog licenses, still have to be done in person. This page walks through what needs a permit, what usually does not, what it costs, and how the process actually works, without pretending we can answer every edge case. For the ones we cannot, the honest answer is: confirm with the City.

What building work needs a permit

The general rule: if you are building something new, adding to a structure, significantly altering one, or changing how a building is used, you need a permit. New buildings, additions, and major alterations are the clear cases. It gets fuzzier around the edges, the small stuff, and that is exactly where people guess wrong. Decks, sheds, garages, fences, and pools all sit near thresholds where a permit kicks in, and those thresholds are set by the City and its building code, not by vibes. The table below is a working guide, not the bylaw itself; the specific size and height triggers can change, so confirm with the City before you buy lumber.

A few of these deserve a flag. Secondary suites touch both building code and zoning, so they are worth a conversation before you frame anything. Swimming pools almost always bring an enclosure requirement, a fence of a minimum height with a self-latching gate, because the point is keeping small children out, not keeping leaves in. Demolition has its own application, separate from the build. And change of use is the sneaky one: no hammer swings, but converting a single-family home into rental units, or a shop into a café, changes what codes apply and often needs both a permit and a zoning check.

Plumbing and electrical are separate

Here is the wrinkle that trips people up. A building permit does not automatically cover the pipes and the wires. Those are different systems, with different rules, and in one case a different level of government entirely.

Plumbing is a separate City of Fredericton permit, issued under the City’s plumbing by-law and the National Plumbing Code. If your project moves, adds, or alters plumbing, a new bathroom, a relocated kitchen sink, a basement rough-in, expect a plumbing permit alongside the building permit.

Electrical is not a City matter at all. In New Brunswick, electrical wiring permits and inspections are handled at the provincial level, through NB Power and the Province’s Technical Inspection Services. Licensed electrical contractors pull the wiring permit; NB Power processes it (you can reach them at 1-800-615-0522). So a kitchen renovation can genuinely involve three separate permits from two levels of government, building and plumbing from the City, electrical from the Province. It sounds like a lot. In practice your contractor handles most of it, but you should know it exists so nobody assumes the other guy pulled it.

How the application and inspection process works

The process is more human than the word “permit” suggests. It usually goes like this.

1. Talk first. Before you submit anything, it is worth a conversation with the Building Inspections counter on the ground floor of City Hall. They will tell you what your project needs, what drawings to bring, and whether zoning is going to be a problem, the kind of thing far cheaper to learn now than after you have poured a footing.

2. Apply and pay through Access Fredericton. You submit the application, your site plan and drawings, and the fee online. Fees and any deposits are generally due at the time of application, payable by credit card, cheque, or cash. Paying, worth noting, is not the same as being approved, the permit is issued after review.

3. Review and issue. Staff review the application against the building code and the zoning for your property. Straightforward residential permits move quickly; anything that needs a variance, a rezoning, or extra drawings takes longer. Ask about timing when you apply rather than guessing.

4. Build, with inspections along the way. Inspections happen at the crucial points of construction, footings and foundation before backfill, framing before it is covered, and so on, so the inspector can actually see the work before drywall hides it. You book these through Access Fredericton as you reach each stage.

5. Final inspection. Every permit closes with a final inspection once the work is done. Do not skip it: an open permit with no final sign-off is exactly the loose thread a buyer’s lawyer pulls on years later when you go to sell.

New to the city and finding all of this a bit much at once? Our moving to Fredericton guide covers the wider first-month checklist, and if you are renting rather than owning, most of this is your landlord’s job, see renting in Fredericton.

Development, rezoning, and variances, the high-level version

Building permits answer “is this built safely?” Zoning answers a different question: “are you allowed to do this here?” Every property in Fredericton sits in a zone, and the zone sets what you can build and how, use, height, how far a structure must sit from your property lines (setbacks), lot coverage, parking. Most projects fit inside the rules and never think about zoning at all.

Two things happen when a project does not fit. A variance is a small, specific exception, your addition would sit a metre closer to the lot line than the setback allows, say, granted where it will not harm the neighbours. A rezoning is bigger: you are asking the City to change the zoning category itself, which is a public process with notice to neighbours and a decision by Council. If you are eyeing something ambitious, adding units, running a business from a residential property, subdividing, assume zoning is part of the conversation and raise it early. A development permit is often the companion to a building permit for exactly these cases. This is high-level on purpose; the specifics depend entirely on your lot, so confirm with the City.

Dog licenses

Yes, your dog needs a license. Fredericton requires every dog to be licensed under By-law S-11, and the reasons are more practical than bureaucratic: a license ties a tag to a rabies vaccination record and to you, so a dog that gets loose has a fast route home instead of a slow one through the shelter. It is a small annual courtesy to your dog, really.

A few specifics worth knowing. Licenses are sold in person only, there is no online dog-tag purchase, at the City’s Service Centre, 397 Queen Street. Bring proof of rabies vaccination; you cannot get the tag without it. Licenses run on the calendar year and must be renewed on or before December 31, so budget an annual trip. The tag goes on the collar and stays there, it is the thing that gets your dog identified and returned. Lost the tag? A replacement is $2. The $200 dangerous-dog fee is not a punishment tier so much as a reflection of the added responsibility that comes with a dog the City has formally designated; if that applies to you, you will already know.

Business licenses, vendors, and signs

Starting or running a business brings its own paperwork, spread across three levels of government, and the City’s honest advice is to start with BizPaL, a free federal/provincial/municipal tool linked from fredericton.ca that asks about your business and hands back a tailored list of the permits and licenses you actually need. It saves you the guesswork of which counter to visit.

On the City side, the ones that come up most often:

• Sign permits, new or altered business signage generally needs approval so it meets size and placement rules for your zone.
• Mobile and itinerant vendors, food trucks, carts, and travelling sellers are regulated; confirm the current permit and fee with the City before you set up, as the specifics vary by activity and location.
• Sidewalk café permits, for restaurants spilling seating onto the public sidewalk.
• Taxi driver licenses and liquor licenses, the latter is provincial, but the City is part of the picture for the premises.

Fees for these are not published in one tidy table, so treat the specific dollar figures as “confirm with the City” rather than gospel. If you are setting up a storefront, the contact the City page has the direct lines to get a straight answer fast.

Special events, street closures, and burn permits

Throwing something bigger than a backyard barbecue, a block party, a street festival, a fun run, usually means a special event application through the City, especially if you want to close a street or serve alcohol. The lead times are real and worth respecting:

Expect to provide a site plan, a safety plan, and proof of liability insurance, generally a $2 million minimum, rising to $5 million where alcohol is involved. A street closure or block party is folded into that same special-event application; there is a spot to request the closure, and the City reviews it against traffic and access. For open fires, the permit comes from the Fire Department, not the building counter, and burn permits are also subject to provincial fire-weather conditions, so a permit is not a guarantee you can light it on a dry, windy day. Confirm current burn conditions before you strike a match.

Does my project need a permit? A quick decision guide

When you are standing in the yard trying to decide, run through this:

• Am I building something new, or adding to a structure? Almost certainly a permit.
• Am I touching anything structural, load-bearing walls, foundations, the roof structure? Permit.
• Am I changing how the building is used, adding a rental unit, converting to commercial? Permit, and probably a zoning check too.
• Does the work move plumbing? Separate plumbing permit from the City.
• Does the work touch wiring? Provincial electrical permit, NB Power and a licensed electrician.
• Is it a deck, shed, garage, fence, or pool? Depends on size and height, this is the grey zone. Call and ask.
• Is it paint, flooring, trim, or a like-for-like repair? Usually no permit.

And the tie-breaker for every “I’m not sure”: one phone call to (506) 460-2020 is free, fast, and settles it. It is a much better use of ten minutes than finding out the hard way. Still stuck on a specific scenario? Ask us and we will point you at the right desk.

The real cost of skipping a permit

The permit fee is the cheapest part of this whole page, so here is why it is a bad idea to dodge it. Work done without a required permit is not a victimless shortcut, it follows the property around.

• Stop-work orders. If the City catches unpermitted work in progress, it can order the work to stop. Now you have a half-built project, exposed to weather, going nowhere until you sort out the paperwork you were avoiding.
• Rip it out. Because an inspector never saw the framing or the footing, the City can require work to be opened up for inspection, or removed and redone. Paying twice to build the same deck is a special kind of frustrating.
• Penalties and legal proceedings. Skipping the process can bring fines and, in stubborn cases, court.
• The resale trap. This is the big one. When you sell, a sharp buyer’s lawyer or home inspector asks whether the finished basement, the addition, or the deck was permitted. An open or missing permit can delay a closing, shrink your price, or spook a buyer entirely. Unpermitted work can also complicate insurance claims if something goes wrong.

None of this is meant to scare you off a Saturday project. It is meant to make the maths obvious: $8 per $1,000 today, or an uncomfortable conversation at your own closing later. Pull the permit. Then build the deck.