One desk on Pine Street with four names on the door
The office is at 605-1 Pine Street, Suite C115 in Hillsville, open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The phone is (276) 730-3016 and the email is [email protected]. Gary Bergeron is the Building Official and also runs the county's erosion and sediment control program. Kevin Burcham is the residential building inspector, Sabrina Shockley the permit technician. Applications are fillable forms, and the county's fee schedule page says plainly they can be emailed in with the plan documents.
Two things trip people up before they get through. The number (276) 730-3178 is the fax, printed right beside the real one on county letterheads, and it gets copied around backwards. And the office answers to four different names in current county material, from the Building Official's office on the website to the Department of Inspections on the application form itself. Same desk either way.
Carroll County has no general zoning. The Town of Hillsville does.
This split settles more patio and driveway questions than anything else in the county code. Carroll County has no general zoning ordinance. The county code's table of contents carries no zoning chapter at all, only airport zoning, and the Planning Commission's own page says a motion was passed to table further discussion of the proposed zoning ordinance and its maps until further notice.
So out in the county there is no zoning setback or use table waiting to catch a patio, and the building permit is most of the conversation. Whether anything else in the county code, such as its subdivision chapter, puts a line on your parcel is a question for the county's Land Use and Planning desk, 276-730-3008, in the same building. Inside the Town of Hillsville it flips. The town code carries a full zoning chapter running to 153 sections, and the town staffs its own Building Code Official, who is also the town engineer and Zoning Administrator, at 276-728-2128, extension 307.
The town issues its own building permits too, and the town code's building construction chapter sets a gate of its own: Council approval of the project, a Council certificate on town water and sewer, a county Health Department statement on septic where those utilities will not be furnished, and a Treasurer certificate that delinquent taxes are satisfied, all in writing, or the permit is void. Erosion and sediment control does not split at the town line, since the county still administers it inside Hillsville. Town permit fees are not online at all, so that is a call to 276-728-2128.
The January 2025 fee schedule and the ordinance it does not quite match
Carroll County publishes a fee schedule, titled Carroll County Building Department Fee Schedule and created January 10, 2025. It prices the residential building permit as a rate per square foot with a minimum under it, and the commercial permit the same way at a higher rate. The fee section of the county's codified ordinance carries the same residential and commercial rates and adds a line the schedule leaves out: a two percent building permit fee assessment required by the Commonwealth, added to the cost of the permit and sent to the Department of Housing and Community Development quarterly.
One line is worth a concrete contractor's attention. The schedule lists a retaining wall permit, owed once the wall holds back three or more feet of unbalanced fill, exactly the height at which Virginia's statewide exemption for retaining walls stops.
The figures are the office's to give, because the code's fee list and the January 2025 schedule do not match line for line. Ask which one is current, and budget on that.
Five approvals Carroll wants in hand first
For a new dwelling the county publishes a cover sheet routing you through five agencies, starting with its own erosion and sediment desk and then four outside offices, each of those with a direct phone number, and it closes by saying evidence of approval or authorization from the appropriate agency is required before any building permits can be issued.
The entrance piece never goes to Pine Street. VDOT's own district page puts Carroll County in the Salem District and lists the Martinsville Residency in Bassett, 276-629-2581, as the office covering the county. The county's own new dwelling packet instead tells applicants to call a VDOT land development engineer at 276-730-0021. Call the residency first and confirm which desk takes your entrance application. Either way, the county's own building application asks flatly whether you have obtained VDOT approval for the driveway or entrance. Our VDOT entrance permit guide covers what that permit involves.
On the drawings side, the county's residential plan check list wants one hard copy of complete construction drawings, front page signed by the individual responsible for the design rather than by a company, and a foundation plan showing footing size, pier size, anchor bolts, wall type, height, waterproofing, drainage and gravel, all dimensioned. That is the page that matters to a concrete crew, because that is the sheet that describes the footing you are about to pour.
- County erosion and sediment control, triggered at 10,000 square feet of land disturbance
- VDOT, for the entrance where a drive meets a state maintained road
- The Virginia Department of Health for septic, (276) 730-3180
- The Twin County E-911 Commission for a 911 address, (276) 236-5122
- AEP for electric service, 1-800-956-4237
Ten thousand square feet is the number that catches driveways
Carroll County repealed and readopted its erosion and sediment control chapter effective July 1, 2024, and publishes the full 19 page ordinance itself. The threshold is 10,000 square feet of land disturbance. Under that the ordinance exempts the work, unless it is part of a larger common plan of development. From there up to an acre is the county's to review. An acre or more goes to DEQ, which the county lists at (276) 676-4800.
Here is why the number matters on a concrete job. The county's own packet spells out that the count includes all land disturbance associated with the project regardless of phasing, and names driveways and septic systems specifically. A house pad, a long drive and a septic field add up faster than people expect, and the drive is often the piece that pushes the total over.
The county's administrative fee is due when the plan is submitted, not when the permit issues, and the county says so on its erosion and sediment page, in the January 2025 fee schedule and in the readopted ordinance itself. For a single family residence the county may accept an agreement in lieu of a plan, which has a flat fee of its own on the fee schedule. And the plan sits in front of the permit, not beside it. The readopted ordinance tells any agency issuing a grading or building permit for land disturbing activity not to issue it unless an approved plan comes in with the application.
In a flood zone, paving counts as development
If your address sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area, the county's floodplain development permit application is the one piece of Carroll County paperwork that comes near naming flatwork. It defines development to include paving, right alongside filling, grading and excavating. Nothing else the county publishes gets that close to a slab.
That form is also the only county form we found asking for a site plan, showing existing and proposed structures, water bodies, adjacent roads, lot dimensions and the 100 year floodplain and floodway boundaries. It is a permit of its own, with its own line on the January 2025 fee schedule. You will not slip past the question either, since the building application asks whether you are in a flood zone on its face.
Three things Carroll County does not publish
A county that publishes this much makes its gaps obvious. Three things a person would reasonably expect to find are not on the county site, in its forms, or in its code. Each of the three below is left as the phone question it is.
One clock the county does publish is its own addition to the state template: the third party inspection policy requires an approved third party inspector to provide a copy within 10 business days. Everything else about scheduling an inspection here comes from asking. On Carroll County footing work, make that call while the date is still open, write down who is placing it, and let the pour date follow the answer. A pour date built on an assumption is the one that slips.
- Whether a driveway, patio, sidewalk or on grade slab needs a county building permit. The words patio, walkway, flatwork, slab and apron appear nowhere in the county's building department material. That answer belongs to Gary Bergeron on (276) 730-3016.
- How an inspection is requested and how much notice the office wants. Virginia's rule says only that the permit holder shall notify the building official when construction reaches a stage requiring one. It sets no notice period, and Carroll publishes no line or form. Ask when the permit is issued.
- How long a Carroll County permit takes. Search results will hand you a confident number. That number appears in no county document we read.