The first thing you will need to get from the City of Burlington is an approved Zoning Clearance Certificate before you can apply for any building pool permit, or business licence. All certificates expire one year from the date they were issued.
What is a zoning clearance certificate?
A zoning clearance certificate is a detailed review of your proposal for a future building permit application. It helps staff make sure that your project meets with all zoning regulations in the City’s Zoning By-Law and other applicable laws. For example, you may need approval from external agencies, like Conservation Halton, depending on your property features and location.
A Zoning By-law controls the use of land in your community, such as:
- How land may be used
- Where buildings and other structures can be located
- The types of buildings that are permitted and how they may be used and
- The lot sizes and dimensions, parking requirements, building heights and setbacks from the street.
Please make sure your Zoning Clearance Certificates are approved before applying for a building permit of business licence.
- All zoning clearance certificates are good for one year from the date they are issued where no building permit application has been submitted to the Building Department. They expire one year after they are issued.
- Make sure your application complies with the City's Zoning By-Law 2020 and any other applicable laws.
- Make sure your plans are to scale and include all required information listed on the submission checklists. Please follow our submission standards.
- If you need approval from external agencies, get your approval from these agencies first and submit them with your zoning certificate application.
- For zoning information for your property use our interactive zoning map
- For information on the street width for your property, or if you need to request this from staff, use our Deemed Street Width App.
| Examples of external agencies |
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Zoning Clearance Certificate Types
This application is for residential projects like building a deck, building an accessory structure like a shed or gazebo, making renovations to a house, building a new house, building additional residential units, or building a residential building with 10 units or less.
This application is for Industrial, Commercial, Institutional, Multi-Residential (more than 10 living units), Business Licenses (including Home Based Business) or Other Non-Residential Uses.
This application is for a residential swimming pool. This includes, a Zoning review a Forestry review and a Pool Enclosure review.
Zoning Verification Letter
You can ask for a letter to confirm zoning information such as permitted uses and regulations for a property or survey compliance that does not require a zoning clearance certificate. We recommend that you get a detailed letter of use to confirm that a use is permitted.
Apply for a Property Information Request if you need a Zoning Verification Letter.