Quick Answer: Almost always, yes. Any building work valued over $3,300 in Queensland (materials, labour and GST included) has to be carried out by someone holding the right QBCC licence, and “building work” includes pretty much anything you’d actually want a landscaper to build for you. It doesn’t just cover the obvious construction stuff like decks, pergolas and retaining walls. It also covers paving, concrete pathways, irrigation, and arguably the most important of all – drainage systems. The only landscaping work that’s reliably exempt is what we call soft landscaping (planting, mulching, lawn, low-profile edging). Read on for the full picture, including why this is such a confusing minefield even for the people doing the work.
The Queensland Building and Construction Commission has felt the need to publish a standalone article on its own website explaining that an ABN and a QBCC licence are not the same thing. Read that sentence again. That’s the state of play in Queensland landscaping licensing, so we wrote this article to give homeowners and landscapers the answers we wish we’d had when we were navigating it ourselves.
The rules around who needs a QBCC licence to work in your garden are confusing enough that we regularly meet operating landscapers who genuinely don’t realise they’re doing licensed work without a licence. It’s a mess.
Here’s why a homeowner should care. Almost every landscaper will tell you they’re “fully insured”, and most will hand you a public liability certificate to prove it. What that certificate doesn’t say is that those policies almost universally have a clause buried in them voiding cover for any work the contractor wasn’t properly licensed to perform. And to be clear, this usually isn’t the landscaper being deliberately dodgy. Most of them genuinely believe they’re covered, because they paid the premium and never read the fine print. The insurer is perfectly happy not to mention it. They collect the premiums all the same, and they only spot the licensing gap when a claim eventually hits their desk and they’re motivated to look. So an unlicensed landscaper doing licensed work has insurance on paper and no insurance in practice, and the homeowner left with the damaged wall, the cracked slab, or the leaking pond is the one who finds out.
So here’s what we wish every Queensland homeowner knew before they signed a quote.
What “building work” actually means in your garden
In Queensland, “building work” includes almost anything you’d actually want a landscaper to build. Decks. Pergolas. Carports. Retaining walls. Paving and concrete that’s more than a stepping stone. Pond and water feature construction. Drainage. Fences. Prefab sheds with slabs.
Drainage especially. South East Queensland gets the kind of subtropical downpours that drop 200mm in an afternoon, most of the suburbs sit on clay, and water with nowhere to go is what makes retaining walls move, decks rot, and slabs crack a few years down the track. It’s also the bit that quietly disappears from cheap quotes, because no client ever thinks to ask whether their landscaper priced for it.
If your project will involve any of that, and the total invoice will be more than $3,300 including GST, the person doing the work needs a QBCC licence in a class that covers it. That figure is important. It’s not “per item”, it’s the total contract value, materials and labour and GST included. Almost any real landscaping job clears it on the first morning.
The exempt parts are what most people would call gardening. Planting, mulching, soil prep, hedge trimming, laying turf, garden bed edging, ongoing maintenance. None of that needs a QBCC licence. The licensing system is aimed at the parts of a project that have to hold soil back, carry weight, drain water away, or otherwise still be standing twenty years from now.
Where people get confused
There are three different “thresholds” floating around in conversations about Queensland landscaping. Each one is real, each one means a different thing, and they get tangled up constantly. This is where most of the trouble starts.
The $3,300 licensing threshold is the one we just covered. It decides whether the contractor needs a QBCC licence at all. It’s a value threshold and pretty much every real project trips it. The threshold exists so a handyman can still do small odd jobs around the place (fixing a fence panel, putting up a letterbox post, hanging a planter box) without going through a full QBCC licensing process. Sensible exception. Just not one that’s going to apply to any real landscaping project.
The one-metre building approval threshold is a different rule entirely. Under the Queensland Building Regulation, a retaining wall doesn’t need council building approval if it’s under one metre, has no load above it, and sits at least 1.5 metres clear of any building or other wall. That rule has absolutely nothing to do with whether the contractor needs a licence.
The engineering certification threshold is a third rule again. The narrower “structural landscaping (trade)” licence only covers retaining walls below the height that needs engineering certification under local law. Walls above a metre, or walls with a load above them, generally need an engineer’s stamp and a higher-class licence to build.
The trap a lot of people fall into, including a lot of landscapers themselves, is hearing “you don’t need council approval for a wall under one metre” and assuming that also means “you don’t need a licensed contractor”. Those are two completely separate rules answering two completely separate questions.
The one-metre rule is about whether your local council needs to approve and inspect the wall before it goes up. The QBCC licensing rule is about whether the contractor is allowed to build it for you in the first place. The first is a building approval question. The second is a licensing question. They have nothing to do with each other.
There’s no height of retaining wall an unlicensed person can legally build for you on any real landscaping job.
As long as the total project value is over $3,300 (and it almost always is), every retaining wall in the contract scope is licensed building work, regardless of how tall it is. A 600mm sleeper wall built as part of a $30,000 garden upgrade still has to be built by a licensed contractor, even though no council permit is required for the wall itself.
The one carve-out is garden edging, and the line between edging and a retaining wall is functional rather than based on height. A retaining wall is anything that holds back a meaningful difference in ground level. Fill on one side, cut on the other, the kind of structure your garden would slump or slide without. Garden edging sits on largely level ground to contain mulch or define the shape of a bed. A 150mm timber sleeper holding back a 150mm cut is a (small) retaining wall. A 300mm decorative brick course laid on flat ground is edging.
Once you’ve seen that distinction, a lot of the confusion in the industry suddenly makes sense.
The licence classes that actually cover landscaping
There are two QBCC licence classes that specifically cover what most people call “structural landscaping” work.
Builder restricted to structural landscaping is the broader of the two. It authorises decking, fencing, carports, pergolas, gazebos, retaining walls, ponds and water features, prefab sheds with slabs up to 10m², excavation, paving and concrete for landscaping, irrigation systems, and tennis courts.
Structural landscaping (trade) covers a lot of the same ground but with the retaining walls capped at heights that don’t require engineering certification, and paving capped at “not intended to carry vehicular traffic”.
Worth a quick aside on fencing here. Aside from the open Builder classes, structural landscaping is the only trade with the scope to build every type of fence under a single licence. Every other trade licence is restricted to a single material. Bricklayers to brick, concreters to concrete, carpenters to timber and metal, stonemasons to stone, and so on. So if a job involves more than one fencing material, structural landscapers and Builders are the only contractors who can take it on under one contract.
A serious landscaping team holds the right base licence and brings in other licensed trades wherever the job calls for it. You can verify any QBCC licence at my.qbcc.qld.gov.au. The search is free, takes about ten seconds, and it tells you exactly what someone is authorised to do.
”But they’re bringing a licensed mate in to do the wall”
This comes up a lot, and it’s worth being clear on.
In Queensland the licence has to be held by the person you have the contract with (referred to as the head contractor), not just the person eventually swinging the hammer. An unlicensed landscaper can’t sign the contract with you, take your money, and then sub-contract a licensed person to do the licensed bits. The arrangement isn’t recognised by QBCC. The contractor’s insurance doesn’t recognise it either. And the licensed mate doing the work doesn’t somehow transfer their protections back up the chain to the unlicensed person you actually have the contract with.
This isn’t just the small end of town. We’ve heard of projects worth more than $500,000 being delivered by people who don’t hold the licence to contract that work. That’s a lot of risk for a homeowner who has no idea it’s even there.
What happens if it all goes wrong
This is the part that catches people out the most. Two things go away the moment something on the job goes wrong with an unlicensed contractor.
The insurance evaporates. We touched on this above, but it’s worth being explicit about why it happens. Public liability and contract works policies in Australia almost all contain an exclusion for work performed outside the contractor’s lawful authority, which is the insurer’s polite term for “unlicensed building work”. The premiums get collected either way. The claim, when it comes in, gets refused. By the time the insurer’s letter arrives the contractor is usually long gone or insolvent, and the homeowner is left wearing the cost of the damaged wall, the cracked slab, the leaking pond, or in the worst cases damage their landscape caused to the house next to it.
Insurance on paper, no insurance in practice.
(A note on Queensland’s Home Warranty Scheme for completeness, because it sometimes gets mentioned in this context. The scheme exists and it does cover residential building work up to $200,000 of rectification, but it’s geared around work done to the dwelling itself. Standalone landscaping work usually sits outside it, even when the contractor is licensed. So in most landscaping jobs the scheme isn’t actually the safety net. The contractor’s PL insurance is. And PL insurance only responds when the work was licensed.)
The regulator can’t enforce on your behalf. The other thing the licensing system gives a homeowner is a regulator with teeth. If a QBCC-licensed contractor builds something and it’s defective or incomplete, QBCC can issue a Direction to Rectify and compel them to come back and fix it. If they don’t comply, QBCC can suspend or cancel their licence, a sanction that actually bites because it shuts down their livelihood. There’s also a quiet professional pressure that comes from knowing the regulator is watching, which is most of why licensed contractors generally do work to a national standard in the first place. If the contractor was never licensed, none of that applies. QBCC can still prosecute them for the unlicensed work, which is useful for the industry as a whole, but it doesn’t get your wall fixed.
There is one small consolation buried in the legislation. Under section 42 of the QBCC Act, an unlicensed contractor can’t legally recover their own labour or any profit on work they did without the right licence, and some homeowners have actually got every dollar back through QCAT. That’s still a long way from a system that just pays for the rectification.
The credentials that aren’t a QBCC licence
Three things get mistaken for a QBCC licence on a really regular basis. None of them are.
An ABN (as already mentioned) is an Australian Business Number issued by the Tax Office. It says someone is registered for tax. It says nothing at all about competence or scope of work.
Public liability insurance says the contractor has a policy. It doesn’t say the policy actually responds to the work they’re doing for you. PL insurers can and do decline claims for work the contractor wasn’t licensed to perform.
Good reviews and a tidy ute say the contractor is presentable, and they might also be excellent at their craft. They still might not be licensed for the structural parts of your job.
The only credential that answers the actual question is a current QBCC licence in a class that covers the work. Everything else is a related question.
Just ask
If a contractor is quoting on your project, two questions usually settle it.
- What’s your QBCC licence number and what class is it?
- If any part of the job sits outside your licensed scope, who will be doing it, and when can I expect a quote from them directly?
A licensed contractor will answer those calmly and without defensiveness. An unlicensed one usually won’t. Either way the answers tell you what you need to know.
Common questions we get asked
When does a landscaper need a QBCC licence in Queensland?
For any building work valued over $3,300 (including labour, materials and GST). That covers nearly all real landscaping projects, including decks, pergolas, retaining walls, paving, drainage, ponds and fences.
Does a retaining wall under 1 metre need a licensed contractor?
Yes, if the total project value is over $3,300. The 1 metre rule is about whether council building approval is required, not whether the contractor needs a QBCC licence. They are two completely separate rules.
What’s the difference between garden edging and a retaining wall?
The distinction is functional, not based on height. A retaining wall is anything that holds back a meaningful difference in ground level. Garden edging sits on largely level ground to contain mulch or define the shape of a bed.
Is an ABN the same as a QBCC licence?
No. An ABN is an Australian Business Number issued by the Tax Office and shows the contractor is registered for tax. A QBCC licence is what authorises a contractor to perform building work in Queensland. They are completely separate.
Can an unlicensed landscaper sub-contract a licensed one to do the licensed parts?
No. In Queensland the head contractor (the person you have the contract with) is the one who needs to hold the QBCC licence. Sub-contracting a licensed person doesn’t transfer the protections back up to the unlicensed head contractor.
What happens if I hire an unlicensed landscaper and the work is defective?
The contractor’s public liability insurance is likely to refuse the claim, because PL policies almost universally exclude work performed outside the contractor’s lawful authority. The QBCC also can’t issue a Direction to Rectify against an unlicensed contractor. The homeowner’s only recourse is to sue them personally in QCAT or court.