City of Little Rock, Arkansas - Building Codes Division (Department of Planning and Development)

City of Little Rock, Arkansas

city

723 West Markham Street, Little Rock, AR 72201

Not required

Required

The Building Codes Division sits within the Department of Planning and Development at 723 West Markham Street, Little Rock, AR 72201; department phone (501) 371-4790, fax (501) 399-3435; Building Permit Desk (501) 371-4832, fax (501) 371-4546, email [email protected]. Permits (where required) are payable online through the City's permit payment portal. A permit issued by the Building Codes Division expires one year from issuance date, with extensions available on written request and a fee (Sec. 8-31(c)(1)u.); a permit becomes invalid if work is not commenced within six months of issuance or is suspended/abandoned for six months. As of a City notice dated August 5, 2025, "the City of Little Rock no longer holds planning or regulatory authority in areas outside city limits (previously the ETJ) due to changes in state law" - the City's permitting jurisdiction is limited to its own city limits. Sec. 8-4 (Hours of construction) restricts exterior and interior construction work to 6:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Monday-Friday, 7:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Saturday, and 1:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Sunday, with a temporary working-hours permit available for work needed outside those hours.

Little Rock adopts the statewide residential code by reference rather than printing a separate or modified residential code of its own. City of Little Rock Code of Ordinances Sec. 8-2(a) states: "The following publications are adopted by reference: ... (3) The 2021 Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, Volume III (Residential) with the most current Arkansas Amendments and 2021 Revisions and Appendices (AQ) based on the 2021 International Residential Code." Sec. 8-3 confirms: "The residential code for the city is adopted by reference in subsection 8-2 (a)(3)." Arkansas's Fire Prevention Code (AFPC) 2021 Edition is itself a statewide floor, not a ceiling: AFPC [A] 101.2.2 (Locally adopted codes) provides that "Each district, county, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state shall only adopt and enforce the provisions of the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, 2021 Edition[; t]he AFPC 2021 Edition shall be the only foundation document available for modification by local jurisdictions should they choose to adopt more stringent provisions." Little Rock's Chapter 8 is therefore the mechanism that makes the state floor code locally enforceable, not an alternative to it; any additional Little Rock requirement could only be layered on top of the AFPC, never substituted for it. As the state capital and Arkansas's largest city, Little Rock is this wave's anchor record: no city-specific IRC roofing-chapter (Chapters 8/9) amendment was found anywhere in Little Rock's own Municode-hosted ordinance text. Chapter 8, Article I (Secs. 8-1 through 8-4) and Article II, Division 1 (Secs. 8-26 through 8-50, entirely reserved from Sec. 8-37 onward) were read in full and contain only administrative and permitting provisions - short title, penalty, board of adjustments and appeals, permits and permit fees, fire district, building-moving, houseowner licensing, certificate of occupancy, and bonding - with no IRC section-level roofing amendment anywhere. The City's own "Enforced Construction Codes" summary (dated January 7, 2023) independently corroborates the same Volume III adoption: "3 Residential Code - 2021 AR Fire Prevention Code Vol. 3."

Not required — Checked at both layers Little Rock residential roofing actually runs through. STATE LAYER: the 2021 Arkansas Fire Prevention Code Rules Changes document's Volume III (Residential) chapter disposition list was read in full and prints, verbatim: "Chapter 8, Roof-Ceiling Construction—No Changes" and "Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies—No Changes" - Arkansas amends nothing in the IRC's roofing chapters, and the document was grepped in full for "UL 2218" and "Class 4" with zero matches anywhere. CITY LAYER: Little Rock Code of Ordinances Chapter 8, Article I (Secs. 8-1 through 8-4) and Article II, Division 1 (Secs. 8-26 through 8-50) were read in full - the complete local building-code adoption and administration chapter - and contain no provision addressing impact resistance, UL 2218, or Class 4 roofing at all; the chapter's only substantive content is administrative (permits, fees, board of appeals, bonding), not IRC section-level amendment. Neither layer imposes an impact-resistance requirement on Little Rock residential roofing as adopted.

City-specific, and residential roofing is exempted outright rather than gated by a dollar threshold. Little Rock Code of Ordinances Sec. 8-31(c)(1)a. (Permit fees) states, verbatim: "Permits are required for any work that exceeds five thousand dollars ($5,000.00), including material and labor, or that requires an inspection, except for residential fences less than seven (7) feet in height, residential roofs, painting, floor coverings and cosmetic changes, one-story detached accessory structure used as tool and storage sheds, playhouses, and similar uses, provided the floor area does not exceed two hundred (200) square-feet, are excluded." Residential roofs are named directly among the excluded categories, so a routine residential re-roof in Little Rock needs no building permit regardless of job value - the $5,000 figure in the same sentence governs the other, non-excluded categories of work. Where a permit IS required for other work, the minimum permit fee is $51.50 (Sec. 8-31(c)(1)c.), and work performed without a required permit is subject to a tripled fee (Sec. 8-31(c)(1)r.).

8.625% combined (state 6.5% + City of Little Rock 1.125%, effective 01/01/22 + Pulaski County 1.000%), per the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration's July-September 2026 quarterly "List of Cities and Counties with Local Sales and Use Tax" table, which prints Little Rock's row as "60-05 01/01/22 1.125% Pulaski 1.000% 2.125%" (2.125% combined local, plus the 6.5% state rate).