Fine for carrying out restricted building work while unlicensed, one New Zealand case (Kaitaia, 2023)

What it is. NZD fine imposed on one tradesperson for carrying out restricted building work while his Licensed Building Practitioner licence was suspended; excludes the $4,880.81 reparation, $1,000 emotional harm and two $1,000 fines for false statements in the same case.

Range NZ$2,000 to NZ$5,600 (across studies)

Sample. One New Zealand case read in MBIE's own media release, with three further MBIE prosecutions of the same offence read in one MBIE release and two news reports. Searches: WorkSafe court summaries register ("licence", "unlicensed", "unqualified", "training", "induction", "competent", "certificate of competence", "forklift licence"), MBIE and Building Practitioners Board reports, news searches on unlicensed restricted building work. Frequencies exist that the schema cannot hold: the Board upholds about 100 complaints or inquiries a year and imposed 59 fines among 81 penalties in 2024/25 (no dollar amounts); WorkSafe issued 1,039 improvement notices in one quarter; Draper (Taupo, 2019) was ordered to pay $3,000 for claiming to be an LBP, which the report does not call a fine.

What it is not. A single case, graded low, and a thin fill for the cell: one fine in one court (Kaitaia) is not a national figure, though Building Act section 85 and MBIE as prosecutor are national. Dodd is the value because MBIE's own release states the fine separately from the reparation and false-statement fines; he held an LBP licence that was suspended, whereas Ross, Faulkner and Williams were never licensed, so this is a suspended licence rather than none. The other three fall at $2,000, $2,000 and $5,600, and Dodd sits inside that range. They were found by search, not drawn as a sample: I found no complete MBIE list, and other prosecutions exist (a $10,000 fine reported in 2025 for unlicensed work with forged documents appeared in search results and was not read). Two of the four cases are news accounts, not court records. The fine is paid by the individual tradesperson and is a sentence on the offence, not the cost of the licence lapse. The only licence regime read here is the LBP scheme for restricted building work; WorkSafe's crane page shows that no crane operator ticket is required.

Where it came from

• Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2023), Unlicensed builder fined for carrying out restricted building work
  paragraph on the sentence: $3,279.80 fine for carrying out restricted building work while unlicensed · source record
• Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2017), Unlicensed builder fined $2,000 for restricted building work without consent
  headline and first paragraph: $2,000 fine · source record
• 1News (2019), Unlicensed builders fined for carrying out restricted work
  second case (Faulkner): $2,000 fine, $4,500 reparation · source record
• 1News (2026), Unlicensed builder fined over botched Carterton home build
  second paragraph: $5,600 fine, $1,000 emotional harm reparation, $130 costs · source record

Considered and set aside

• 1News: A separate regime (Electricity Act 1992, Electrical Workers Registration Board). Six prosecutions heard March to July 2024 with fines of $1,200 to $9,000 ($28,950 in all) are reported by a news article; the Board's own prosecution page lists no amounts. A better base for a people figure than one building case, once the Board's releases are read, and not mixed in here because the licence and the trade differ.
• Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment: Gives the Board's disciplinary fines for LBPs as a range of $500 to $5,000 over four years but no average, and a disciplinary fine is for poor work or supervision by a person who holds a licence, not for working without one.
• Building Practitioners Board (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment): Counts 59 fines among 81 penalties in 2024/25 but states no dollar amounts, and covers licensed practitioners only.
• Building Practitioners Board (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment): Counts 56 fines in 2023/24 with no dollar amounts; the same limit as the 2025 report.
• WorkSafe New Zealand: An unlicensed driver died, but the $351,563 fine was for the whole section 36 duty failure and cannot be split to the missing licence.
• WorkSafe New Zealand: Competence of a harness user was one strand of a risk-assessment failure, and no fine was in fact imposed because the defendant could not pay.
• WorkSafe New Zealand: States that holding a crane unit standard or certificate is not mandatory, so a crane operator without one breaches no ticket requirement that a penalty could be counted against.
• WorkSafe New Zealand: Counts improvement notices (1,039), prohibition notices (254) and prosecutions disposed (12) for one quarter, with no dollar value and no cause split.
• Hesketh Henry: An average fine of $145,033.60 per section 36 offence from the Act's first two years, all sectors and all causes, from the firm's own count.

non_compliance/people_restricted_building_work_unlicensed_fine_nz · NZ · F ·the record ·link to this figure ·dispute this figure(or email support@demiton.io)