New Britain, CT Building Setbacks & Zoning: Setback Rules (2026)

New Britain's Zoning Ordinance sets minimum yard setbacks in each district's dimensional-regulations schedule, with subsections numbered .01 through .05 covering front, side, combined side, corner-lot side, and rear yards. In the S-1 Residential District, home to 13,500-square-foot single-family lots, Section 60-40-70 requires a 50-foot front yard, a 15-foot side yard on each side, a combined 30-foot total for both side yards on an interior lot, 30 feet on the side abutting a street on a corner lot, and a 30-foot rear yard.

The S-2 Residential District, built around smaller 8,000-square-foot lots, scales every one of those numbers down under Section 70-40-70: a 35-foot front yard, a 7-foot side yard, 17 feet combined for both sides on an interior lot, 15 feet on a corner-lot side abutting a street, and a 25-foot rear yard. The pattern holds across the ordinance's residential, business and industrial districts: each carries its own version of the Section 40-70 schedule with the same five subsections, so the operative minimum always depends on which district a lot sits in.

Section 230-20-10 layers an exception onto these minimums for older, separately owned lots that predate the ordinance and are not adjacent to another lot in the same ownership: a single-family dwelling is still permitted there even if it cannot meet the full side-yard minimum, provided the combined width of both side yards is at least 25 percent of the lot width and the narrower side yard is no less than 5 feet wide. Section 230-40-60 can also push the front setback deeper than the district minimum, by up to 10 feet, where most of a block is already built out closer to the average setback line of neighboring houses. The Zoning Enforcement Officer confirms setback compliance during the Zoning Permit and site-plan review that precedes construction.