Ogden, UT Building Safety: Building Permits (2026)

Ogden City Code § 15-1-7 makes it unlawful for an owner, occupant or contractor to erect, construct, reconstruct or alter a building, or to change its use or occupancy, without first obtaining a building permit from the Building Official. The Building Official cannot issue that permit until the Community and Economic Development Director has separately approved a written land use permit, and, where the title requires it, until the Planning Commission or the Mayor has also acted. Since April 1, 2003, the ordinance has also required a stand-alone written land use permit, without a building permit, for four narrower categories of work: paving or hard-surfacing a lot (other than walkways, ornamental landscaping or minor repair of an existing legal surface); any change of use of a lot or parcel that does not itself involve construction; installing a fence over four feet tall in a required yard, or any fence inside a sight-triangle area defined at Ogden City Code § 7-3-2; and keeping residential chickens.

Every application for a building or land use permit must include a scale plan showing lot dimensions, existing and proposed structures and neighboring buildings, and the Building Official keeps a record of every application and permit issued. Fees for examining plans, issuing permits and processing related zoning matters are set in Title 4, Chapter 6, and once assessed must be paid before an application is accepted; those fees are non-refundable once the process starts. A related certificate of occupancy and zoning compliance, required by § 15-1-8 before any new or altered building can be used, is applied for at the same time as the building or land use permit and issues only once construction matches the approved plans.