PERTHThe name on the sign may not be the business building your house
WA builder registration, how to verify it, and the licence-lending risk Building and Energy warned about — why the name on the permit
The name on the sign at the front of a building site is not always the name of the business actually building it. That sounds like a technicality. It is the single most useful thing to check before you sign a building contract, and Building and Energy has published a warning about exactly why.
What registration is, and what it is not
In Western Australia, anyone contracting to carry out building work valued over $20,000 must hold building contractor registration. It is governed by the Building Services Board under the Building Services (Registration) Act 2011, and it is not a membership you buy or an association you join. It is a statutory licence, granted only after the Board is satisfied the applicant has the qualifications, the experience, the financial capacity and the business competency to run building work responsibly.
That last part matters more than people realise. Registration is not only a test of whether someone can build. It is a test of whether they can run a building business without leaving clients stranded, which is why financial capacity and contract-administration knowledge are assessed alongside trade skill.
The register is public. Every registration has a number, and that number is checkable in a minute. This business holds BC105819, and the whole reason it appears on every page of this site is that you can verify it.
Licence lending: the risk the regulator warned about
Building and Energy issued Industry Bulletin 155 to warn registered builders about the risks of allowing another entity to carry out building work under their registration. The practice has a name — licence lending — and it works like this: an unregistered operator does the actual building, while a registered builder lends their number to satisfy the legal requirement, usually for a fee.
For the borrowing builder it is a way to trade without meeting the standard. For the lending builder it is a serious liability, because they carry the legal responsibility for work they never supervised. And for you, the client, it is the worst of both, because the person building your house is not the person the registration says is building your house, and the person named on the permit may never set foot on site.
If a dispute arises later, this is where it gets ugly. You may find the entity you dealt with has no registration and no assets, while the registered builder argues they had no real involvement. The paperwork points one way and the reality points another.
How to check, and what to look for
Ask for the registration number and look it up on the Building and Energy register before you sign anything. Then check that the name on the registration matches the name on your contract and the name on the building permit. Those three should be the same entity. Where they are not, ask why, and do not accept a vague answer.
Be wary of an operator who offers a membership of a trade association in place of a registration number. Associations are worthwhile, but they set their own entry requirements and they are not the statutory licence. The Board is.
Why an inspector cares about this
Because the same distinction runs through our own trade. There is no registration required to call yourself a building inspector in WA, which is set out on our building inspector page. The question you should ask an inspector is the same one you should ask a builder: what is your registration, and can I check it.
If you are already in a dispute with a builder, whether they were properly registered and whether they built to their approved plans becomes central quickly. That is the territory of an expert witness report, and the WA process for getting there is set out on our building disputes page.
What registration does and does not guarantee
Builder registration is a genuine and important protection, but it is worth being precise about what it does and does not guarantee, because both the reassurance and its limits matter. Registration means that a builder has met the requirements the regulator sets to be registered, and that they are subject to the regulatory system, which gives a consumer recourse and oversight that simply do not exist when unregistered people do work that should be done by a registered builder. Using a registered builder for work that requires one is a real protection, and checking that the builder you are dealing with is actually registered, in their own name, is a basic and worthwhile step.
What registration does not do is guarantee that every registered builder produces good work, because registration is a threshold and a system of accountability rather than a certificate of excellence. Registered builders vary in quality like any group of professionals, and registration does not remove the value of checking a builder's track record, seeing their previous work, and, on a build, having the work independently inspected at the key stages. Registration tells you a builder is in the system and accountable; it does not tell you they are the right builder for your job or that their work will not need checking. Both the reassurance and the limitation are worth holding at once.
The licence-lending problem
One specific risk the regulator has warned about is licence lending, and it is worth a buyer and an owner understanding it because it defeats the whole protection registration is supposed to provide. Licence lending is where an unregistered person carries out building work under the registration of a registered builder who is not actually running the job, in effect renting the registration to make unregistered work look registered. The registered builder lends their number and standing to a job they are not genuinely responsible for, and the actual work is done by someone outside the system, without the accountability and the recourse that registration exists to guarantee.
The danger for a consumer is that the job looks properly registered on paper while being, in substance, unregistered work. The protections a consumer thinks they have, recourse against a genuinely responsible registered builder, do not really exist, because the registered builder was never truly running the job. This is why checking registration is not just a matter of confirming a number exists but of confirming that the builder actually engaged with the job is the one carrying the responsibility, and why a mismatch between the builder named on the paperwork and the person actually running the site is a warning sign worth taking seriously.
Why an inspector cares, and what a buyer can do
An inspector cares about builder registration and the licence-lending risk because they bear directly on the quality and the accountability behind the work an inspection is assessing, particularly on a recent build. A house built by a genuinely registered builder running the job, with proper supervision and accountability, starts from a different place than one built through a lent licence by someone outside the system, and the difference tends to show in the work. Where an inspection of a recent build turns up work that falls short, the question of who actually built it and under what registration becomes part of understanding the situation.
For a buyer, the practical steps are straightforward. On a recent build or a significant renovation, it is worth confirming who the builder was and that they were registered, which can be checked, and being alert to any mismatch between the builder named in the documents and whoever actually did the work. Beyond that, the protection against the whole category of risk, registered builder who underperforms, or unregistered work dressed up as registered, is the same: have the work independently inspected on its own merits, because an inspection assesses the actual condition and quality of what was built regardless of whose name was on the permit. The registration check tells you what the paperwork says; the inspection tells you what the building says, and both are worth having.
Common questions
How do I check if a builder is registered in WA?
Ask for the registration number and look it up on the Building and Energy register. Registration is required to contract for building work valued over $20,000, and the register is public.
What is licence lending?
When an unregistered operator carries out building work under a registered builder's number, usually for a fee. Building and Energy warned against it in Industry Bulletin 155 because the client ends up dealing with an entity different from the one named on the registration.
Is a trade association membership the same as registration?
No. Registration is a statutory licence granted by the Building Services Board. Associations set their own entry requirements and are not the legal licence to contract for building work.
This comes up on every building investigation & diagnostics we carry out.
Read next: your builder has to build the house that was approved and how many houses is your builder running at once?.
Sources
Read rather than recalled. Summarised here; the documents themselves are Crown copyright and are linked rather than reproduced.