Run a business from home

• The property where you’re planning to work from home must have a house on it, and the site must be your main residence.
• You can’t use more than a third of the total floor area of any buildings on the site for work from home activities.
• Any noise you make as part of the work you’re doing must fit within residential noise limits.
• You can’t create so much dust that:
  • you can see dust in the air beyond the edge of the property
  • you can see that dust has settled on the ground, on a next-door building or structure, or in a water source.
• You must have one on-site parking space available for each person who works there. This doesn’t include parking for the people who live there.
• You must not park any vehicles, caravans or trailers that are connected with your work from home activity in the first 5 metres at the front of your site, except if they are on a driveway.
• You won’t be allowed to do any work from home activity where you need to use trucks or other heavy vehicles, or that would need you to park these on the site or the streets around you.
• If you're storing any material that's part of your business outside of the house, you need to make sure that it's covered so it can’t be seen from the street or surrounding properties.
• You can’t sell any products from the house.

Criteria for signs advertising work-from-home activities in residential areas

You can advertise your work from home activity on your house or your fence as long as you meet all these conditions:

• The maximum combined area of permanent signs can’t exceed 5 square metres.
• Signs must not be higher than 2 metres off the ground.
• Sign content must only contain the name, character or purpose of the activity on the site.
• If you want to illuminate the sign, it can’t flash or be so bright that it annoys your neighbours.
• The sign must not hide windows or architectural features.
• The sign mustn’t project above the parapet level or the highest part of the building it’s attached to.

Any signage that does not meet the criteria needs a resource consent.

There may be different rules for signage if you live in a heritage area or have a heritage-listed property.

• The property where you’re planning to work from home must have a house on it.
• You can’t use more than a third of the floor area of residential buildings on the site for work from home activities.
• You can’t have more than three people working on the property at the same time.
• The house has to continue to look like a house.
• You can’t create so much dust that:
  • you can see dust in the air beyond the edge of the property
  • you can see that dust has settled on the ground, on a next-door building or structure, or in a water source.
• If you're storing any material that's part of your business outside of the house, you need to make sure that it's covered so it can’t be seen from the outside the property.
• If the land is smaller than 1200 square metres, you won’t be allowed to do any work from home activity where you need to use heavy vehicles, or need to park these on the property or in nearby streets.
• You can’t park any vehicle associated with your work from home activity on a public road.
• You can’t sell any products from the property.
• You need to get consent for any kind of discharge you create as part of your work from home activity, and make sure you comply with the conditions of that consent.
• You must not exceed the noise limits for rural areas – see chapter 15.1.2 of the District Plan.

District Plan 15.1.2: Rural area work from home activity conditions

Criteria for signs advertising work-from-home activities in rural areas

The rules are the same as if you were in a residential area above, except:

• the maximum signage area must not exceed 1 square metre.
• only one sign can be displayed on any site.

Any signage that does not meet the criteria needs a resource consent.

There may be different rules for signage if you live in a heritage area or have a heritage-listed property.

If your business doesn't meet the criteria

If you don't meet the criteria above, you'll need to apply for resource consent to run your business out of your home. This is because your business may have an effect on your neighbours – for example, through noise or parking.

Resource consents

If you're turning an entire residential property into a business — for example, turning a house into a daycare centre or doctor's office — you'll also need to apply for a change of use.

Changing the use of a building

When you apply for resource consent, we may need:

• an acoustic engineer’s report if the business will generate noise
• a parking survey from a traffic engineer, to show the parking demand in the area
• landscaping plans, for example to demonstrate how car parking areas can be screened from view.