York County, VA Building Safety: Childcare Center Rules (2026)

Sec. 24.1-428 layers building and site-safety conditions onto every pre-school, day care center, and nursery school in York County, on top of whatever zoning district approval the use already needs. Subsection (a) requires the facility to be licensed by the Virginia Department of Education, Office of Child Care Health and Safety, meeting the standards for that particular facility and its intended use, before the county will treat it as a lawful use. Subsection (b) requires outdoor recreation area sized and located to the standards the Department of Education and the York County division of parks, recreation, and tourism recommend, and that space can't be counted from area covered by buildings or required parking, from required front yards, infiltration yards, or buffer areas, and it has to be actually suitable and designed for the ages of the children the facility is licensed to serve.

Subsection (c) is the safety-hardware requirement: every outdoor play area must be enclosed by a fence at least four feet tall, built of a material the zoning administrator finds suitable, and designed to reduce noise impacts on adjacent residential property; the zoning administrator can also require landscaping to partly or fully screen the fence from view. Subsection (d) is the final gate: all licenses, permits, and approvals from every applicable regulatory agency have to be in hand before the use is established, not merely applied for.

The parking table in Sec. 24.1-606 adds one more concrete number: a day care center, nursery school, or child care center must provide 1.5 off-street spaces per classroom or teaching station, plus one stacking space for every five students the facility is licensed to enroll.