Pinellas County Building and Development Review Services — Local services in Clearwater

If I could leave zero stars I would. This office punishes homeowners who try to do things the legal way and pull a permit. I now know why every single contractor and vendor I obtained bids from refused to pull a permit leaving me to pull a homeowner's permit and do the work myself.

I work in an industry where vendors pull permits frequently in the cities and the county. I know certain vendors have been in the county long enough and have an "in" with the department and get permits faster. Small businesses and homeowners are absolutely disregarded. Their permit portal is antiquated and does not work. If you watch the instructional video, it says there are things on the portal that do not exist. They also put the homeowner permit on hold and lie to you to come down to do an in person ID verification making you think something is wrong. Only to find out that they just want to make sure you know that you hold the liability as a homeowner.

I have a small project, requiring no permit for any of the homeowner work being done aside from outsourcing electrical and they will not issue a permit for at least 6 weeks. I even had a certified engineer confirm the work is to code and still cannot get a permit issued. There are absolutely no cares given. A damn disgrace.

Sadly, the DMV is actually more efficient than...

Pinellas County Building and Development is a dumpster fire filled with dirty diapers. You used to be able to walk in and get helped and usually approved the same day with correct paperwork but now everything is online and takes to much time. I feel bad for the some of the good workers inside the office that have to deal with the government policies. If everything is online now they should get rid of that eye sore of a building and take that 70’s court house with it. Imagine, your on vacation and that’s the first and last thing you see when you leave the beach. (The only thing people come to Clearwater is the beach!$). I was wondering why most contractors ask permit or no permit, now I know. Nobody truly cares when you call and are very unhelpful for residents, you get the same answer about going to website. Waste of tax payers money and...

Until recently, we were very happy with our numerous interactions with the Pinellas Building permit office. When we walked in we were waited on in a reasonable amount of time and met face to face with genuinely nice, knowledgeable people. Our permits were issued quickly and inspections were easy to schedule. However, since they stopped allowing us to come into the office and have forced everyone to use their new online system, service and efficiency have seriously declined. Nobody answers the phone and permits sit for weeks with zero action. WHAT HAPPENED? There must still be some of the same nice, hard working people that we used to interact with, right? Please return to the face-to-face option that taxpayers had in the past. That seemed to ensure some level of accountability. This DIY-online thing you've implemented is completely...