Colorado
Westminster, CO permit fees and requirements
Westminster prices a building permit from one valuation table — $19.50 up to $500 of valuation
then $19.50 plus $2.65 for each additional $100, then $59.25 plus $11.90 for each additional $1,000 — and its opening sentence says what the fee includes: plan review at 65% of it, estimated use tax at 4.25% of half the valuation, and 15% for each trade scope. The table closes at every one of its seven seams, which no schedule on this site had done before.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Westminster permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Westminster building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-24 |
| Westminster electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-24 |
| Westminster plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-24 |
Local context
What is specific to Westminster
Three things about this schedule change the answer, and one of them is arithmetic rather than policy.
The first is that a trade permit here is not a permit. Where Denver requires a separate permit for each discipline and prices it from the value of that trade's work, Westminster adds 15% of the *building permit fee* for each of mechanical, plumbing and electric, and a further 15% of the *plan review fee* for each. The same two towns, twenty minutes apart, disagree about what an electrical permit is — and a schedule that prices a trade as a percentage of something else cannot be computed until that something else is known. That is why the electrical and plumbing pages ask for the project's valuation: there is no electrical figure to look up in isolation.
The second is that the use tax is a percentage of a percentage. "Estimated Use Tax — 4.25% of 50% of Total Valuation (effective 1/1/2026)" is 2.125%, which is not a whole number of basis points. It is carried here as the exact fraction 17/800 rather than rounded, and on a $250,000 project it is the largest single line in the bill — $5,312.50, more than three times the permit fee itself. A reader who assumes a permit costs about 1% of the work should see that number early.
The third is the one worth trusting the table for: every seam closes. Band by band, the figure the lower band produces at its top is exactly the figure the upper band opens with — $19.50 at $500, $59.25 at $2,000, $332.95 at $25,000, $546.70 at $50,000, $844.20 at $100,000, $2,684.20 at $500,000 and $4,659.20 at $1,000,000. Denver's table is a dollar short at one handover, Clark County's four cents short at another, and Houston's brackets deliberately do not chain at all. This one is internally exact, which is a finding about the document and not a courtesy to it: it means a reader can check any row against the one below it and get the same answer. The bands are asserted at every boundary in the tests.
Alongside all of that sits a flat list of named jobs — "Miscellaneous SFD Residential Permit Fees" — where a water heater replacement is $40.00 and re-roofing is $100.00. Those are permits priced by job rather than by value, and they are the only place in this schedule where a common household job has a published figure.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Westminster asks for the total value of all construction work, and its wording is unusually specific about what that includes: "labor and materials, for all finish work, painting, roofing, electrical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, conveyance systems, fire protection systems and other permanent work or equipment".
Two consequences follow. The first is that the electrical and plumbing scopes are *inside* the valuation — the permit fee is computed on a number that already contains them — and are then charged again as 15% trade fees. The second is that a subcontractor's contract value is not the valuation: it is one slice of a number that the applicant declares in full.
Unlike Denver, Westminster's schedule states no rule about taking the higher of the declared value and a published cost table. The pages here compute from the figure you give them and never substitute a rate for a valuation.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
These figures are what the City of Westminster's own Building Division Fee Schedule publishes, computed by this site's engine. They are not a total project cost. In particular they exclude:
- Everything in the schedule's "Other Inspections and Fees" block, which is charged by event or by hour rather than by valuation: inspections outside normal business hours at $50.00 per hour with a two-hour minimum, re-inspection at $50.00, additional plan review for revisions at $50.00 per hour, a temporary certificate of occupancy at 5% of the building permit fee with a $100.00 floor, and a letter of code compliance at $25.00.
- Sign permits. Monument signs and wall or building signs are "per fee schedule" and a wall sign is specifically marked no use tax, so their price is not in this schedule at all. Banners and bus benches are priced on the miscellaneous list; they are not construction work and are not modelled here.
- Fire department and operational permits, which the schedule lists in its miscellaneous block. The two readings of this document disagree about whether the $100.00 on that block belongs to operational permits or to fire department fees, so no figure from that block is published on this site rather than the wrong one being published.
- Stop-work order penalties — double the permit fee with a $250 floor for a first offence, triple with a $500 floor for a second. A penalty is not a fee.
- Anything charged by another Colorado authority. Westminster issues its own permits; Adams, Jefferson and Weld counties do not issue a Westminster permit, and Denver's schedule describes a different city.
- Water, sewer and utility connection charges, which are utility charges rather than permit fees and appear nowhere in this schedule.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
Building Division Fee Schedule (effective January 1, 2026)
One page, headed "BUILDING DIVISION FEE SCHEDULE" and "(Effective January 1, 2026)", sha256 beginning 8d77172fe6affc1d. Read 2026-09-24 in three pdftotext modes. `-raw` and `-table` disagree by one row throughout the two flat lists at the foot of the page — `-raw` puts each value on the line above its label — and both agree once that shift is accounted for, which is the check the project's two-mode rule exists for. The valuation table, the review percentage and the use tax rate are unaffected by the shift.
- City websiteCity
The City's own Fees page, which repeats the valuation table and is the corroborating reading for the two percentage rows: plan review at 65% of the building permit fee, and use tax at 4.25% of half the valuation. It also carries the rate this one replaced — 3.85% — which is what makes the "effective 1/1/2026" reading certain rather than inferred. No figure on this site is taken from it that the schedule does not also print.