How to check a pool builder's licence

The four registers, and what to type into each

New South Wales. Service NSW publishes “Check a builder or tradesperson licence”. You can search by licensee name, licence number, licence type, ABN, ACN, or location — suburb, postcode or local government area. The location search is genuinely useful: if a business tells you it is local, the register will show you whether the licence is registered where it says it is.

Queensland. The QBCC licensee register lets you search by licence number, name or company name. It is the most informative of the four, because QBCC also publishes separate suspended licences, cancelled licences and excluded individuals registers, and a swimming pool register you can search by address to see whether a pool at a property is registered.

Victoria. The Victorian Building Authority's functions now sit with the Building and Plumbing Commission. Search “find and check a practitioner”, and then separately check the compliance and enforcement register, which records disciplinary and prosecution action. Older search results and older builder websites still say VBA — look under both names.

Western Australia. Building and Energy runs a single WA Online Licence Search covering the register of builders, building surveyors, painters and building engineers. The registers are updated daily.

A licence is not one thing — check the class

“Licensed builder” is not a single credential. Queensland is the clearest example: swimming pool construction, installation and maintenance is its own licence class under the trade contractor licence type. A business can hold a perfectly valid QBCC licence for something else entirely.

So the check has three parts, not one:

1. Is the licence current? Not expired, not suspended, not cancelled.
2. Does the class cover pool construction? Read the class description on the record, not the marketing.
3. Are there conditions on it? A licence can carry conditions that restrict what the holder may do or the value of work they may take on.

Victoria adds a second question that is easy to miss — registration categories and classes each define what the practitioner may lawfully undertake, so the category on the record is the scope of what they are allowed to build.

Insurance is the second check, and the deposit is the deadline

The licence proves the builder may do the work. Insurance is what protects you if they die, disappear, become insolvent or lose their licence part-way through. It is compulsory for pool work in the eastern states and the thresholds are low enough that virtually every real pool contract is caught.

NSW. SIRA states that home building compensation insurance is required on jobs over $20,000 for the construction of new homes, renovations and swimming pools, and that the business must give you the certificate of insurance before it asks for or takes any payment, including a deposit, and before it starts work. That sequencing is the part to hold them to — a certificate produced after the deposit has already been paid has skipped the protection it was designed to give.

Queensland. The Queensland Home Warranty Scheme applies to residential building work valued above $3,300, and swimming pool construction or installation is expressly within the covered work. The contractor pays the premium.

Victoria. Domestic building insurance is required above $16,000, and the builder must arrange it before asking for or receiving any payment under a major domestic building contract.

Cover of this kind is last-resort insurance. It responds when the builder cannot, not when you are simply unhappy with the work, and there are limits and time bars. Read the certificate rather than assuming the scope.

Three reasons a register search returns nothing

You searched the trading name. This is the most common one and WA states it outright: Building and Energy does not publish business or trading names on its registers, and directs you to ASIC to connect a trading name to an entity. A pool business trading as one thing can be licensed under a company name you have never seen. Get the full legal entity name and the ABN off the quote and search that.

You searched the salesperson. The person who came to your house and measured the yard is often not the licence holder. The licence may sit with a company, with a nominated supervisor named on it. In WA, practitioner registration is for individuals and permits a person to be the nominated supervisor of a registered building contractor, while contractor registration is what allows a business to trade as a builder — two different records for what a homeowner thinks of as one builder.

You searched the wrong state. There is no national register. Licensing is state by state, and a business licensed in Queensland is not thereby licensed to build in NSW. If the business is close to a border, or is quoting on a job away from its home base, check the register for the state the pool will be built in.

What the register will not tell you

A register confirms a legal status. It is not a quality rating and it will not tell you whether the last twenty pools this business built were good. QBCC publishes more history than the others — licence history, and separate registers for suspensions, cancellations, exclusions and adjudication decisions — and Victoria's compliance and enforcement register records disciplinary and prosecution action. Both are worth reading. But an unblemished record means no formal action has been taken, not that no one has ever been unhappy.

The checks a register cannot do for you: reading the contract, checking the progress payment schedule against the actual build stages, confirming the deposit is within the legal limit for your state, and getting the same scope priced by more than one business so you can see what a normal price for your site looks like.

We do not name or rate individual pool businesses on this site, and we are not a builder. What we can do is put the same scope in front of several licensed businesses and let you compare the numbers.

The unlicensed-work penalties, and one we would not publish

NSW publishes the clearest figures: swimming pool building work valued above $5,000 in labour and materials — covering construction, safety fencing, filtration and heating — requires a contractor licence, and unlicensed work attracts fines of $22,000 for an individual and $110,000 for a company under the Home Building Act 1989.

Victoria makes it an offence both to contract for and to carry out domestic building work above $10,000 while unregistered.

Queensland is the gap. A penalty-unit schedule for unlicensed building work is widely quoted in law-firm commentary and converts to substantial dollar amounts, but neither QBCC page we checked publishes a dollar figure. We have therefore published only the verified $3,300 licence threshold and no Queensland penalty amount. If you need the number, it comes from the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act, not from a directory.

Common questions

Sources

• Service NSW — Check a builder or tradesperson licence
• NSW Government — Swimming pool building work licence
• QBCC — Our lists and registers
• Building and Plumbing Commission (VIC) — Find and check a practitioner
• Building and Energy (WA) — Licence and registration search
• SIRA NSW — Home building compensation for builders and tradies
• Consumer Affairs Victoria — Becoming a registered building practitioner

General information only, current at 2026-09-05. Pool rules differ by state and by council, and penalty amounts are updated regularly. Confirm your own obligations with your council or a registered inspector before acting.