Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Specialist work that needs a licence at any value

In short

  • NSW licenses general building and trade work above a set threshold. A short list of specialist trades sits outside that rule entirely and needs a licence regardless of the size of the job.
  • Electrical work, disconnection and reconnection of fixed electrical equipment, medical gas and mechanical services, and plumbing, draining and gasfitting are named as the no-threshold classes.
  • This distinction is about when a licence is needed at all, not about insurance — but it shapes what a certificate is even being checked against, because a job that never crossed the general threshold can still have required a licensed, insured trade.

A common question sits behind a lot of confusion about small jobs: "does a two-hundred-dollar job really need a licensed tradesperson?" The honest answer depends entirely on which trade is doing the work, and NSW draws a sharp line between two groups of trades that most people assume are treated the same.

General building work and the long list of trade-work classes — painting, tiling, waterproofing, roofing and the rest — are licensed above a threshold set by the regulation. A short list of specialist trades is licensed regardless of the cost of the work, with no threshold at all.

The trades with no threshold

The categories-of-work register names air conditioning and refrigeration work, electrical work, disconnection and reconnection of fixed electrical equipment, medical gas and mechanical services, and plumbing, draining and gasfitting as requiring a licence regardless of the cost of the work.

The reasoning is exposure rather than cost: a small electrical or gas job carries the same failure modes as a large one, so the regulator does not let job size decide whether the work needs a licensed practitioner.

Everything else sits above a threshold

General building work and the twenty-two-odd trade-work classes are licensed only once the value of the work crosses the threshold set by the regulation. Below that line, the work can lawfully be done unlicensed — which is a statement about who may legally do the work, not a statement about whether insurance matters for it.

The exact figure that sets the line is the kind of detail that moves and is sourced separately; the structural point that matters here is that it exists for most trades and does not exist at all for the specialist list above.

Why this matters alongside the insurance question

A job below the threshold for a general trade class can still be commercially significant enough that a client asks for a certificate of currency — the threshold governs licensing, not whether someone can reasonably ask for evidence of cover.

For the no-threshold trades, the reverse point matters: a small electrical or gasfitting job is never "too small to need a licence", so a business relying on job size as a reason to skip engaging a licensed, insured trade for that work is relying on a rule that does not exist for those classes.

Questions

Does the no-threshold rule mean these trades also automatically carry an insurance condition on the licence?
No — the no-threshold rule is about when a licence is required at all, not about what the licence requires once held. Whether a specific licence in this list carries an insurance condition is a separate question, answered on that occupation’s own page.
Who sets the threshold figure for the trades that do have one?
It is set by the regulation governing NSW building and trade licensing and is reviewed from time to time. The current figure is recorded on this site with a source and a date rather than repeated here as prose, because it is a number that changes.
I do small electrical repairs. Do I need a licence for a very minor job?
Based on the confirmed rule, electrical work requires a licence regardless of the cost of the work — there is no small-job exception for this class, unlike general trade work.

Sources

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