Home Occupation Review

To broaden the range of home-based business opportunities available to residents, the Community Planning Division has taken on a review of the Home Occupation provisions within the Town's current Zoning By-law (2010-050).

Study Background

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was already a growing trend towards working from home. Town staff routinely received requests for new home-based business uses that the current by-law does not permit. BWG residents clearly wanted to use their homes as affordable business incubators (for things like swimming lessons, catering, e-commerce, medical offices, contracting and more), and needed more flexibility in how they used their properties (including things like conducting business on-site and using accessory buildings for storage). In response, staff initiated the process of amending the Zoning By-law at the end of 2018.

The Town's intention is to be progressive and permissive in terms of home-based business permissions, while ensuring that these businesses remain respectful of residential neighbours. Staff have produced a draft by-law that strives to balance these two aims.

Proposed Changes

The Zoning By-law that is currently in place imposes a number of restrictions on home-based businesses. The proposed changes will make it possible to operate more types of businesses in homes, and to use homes for more business-related activities.

In brief, the draft amendments to the by-law would:

Allow enclosed accessory buildings to be used to conduct home occupation business and storage (including but not limited to storage of contractor materials, equipment, vehicles or even turning a garage into a home office).
Allow all dwelling types to use a portion of the dwelling for home-based occupations (no longer limited to detached dwellings, linked dwellings and semi-detached dwellings).
Broaden sales permissions to allow goods to be purchased and picked up from a home business as long as goods are not exposed (i.e., not a retail storefront) and sale is coordinated prior to attendance (similar to how one purchases items from Kijiji).
Allow sale of incidental goods associated with services provided by the home occupation (for example a dentist can sell electric toothbrushes; a chiropractor can sell orthotics and pillows; a fitness instructor can sell a supplement or protein shake powder, etc.).
Allow delivery and pick up from the home business.
Formally permit lessons, classes, instruction and the like (including teaching/tutoring and fitness instruction).
Allow outdoor swimming lessons.
Allow home-based catering businesses.
Allow home-based medical practices.

Why Change the By-law?

There are many reasons why this is good for our community:

To respond to the needs and requests of BWG residents.
To adapt and become resilient to a changing world.
To align with changes in public purchasing habits and preferred methods.
To reduce the carbon footprint and decrease traffic congestion caused by commuting.
To provide more local services, thus making BWG a more complete community.
To keep money in BWG.
To produce jobs in BWG.
To nurture and grow made-in-BWG businesses that will serve the community.
To make use of existing infrastructure.
To keep local talent in BWG, making this a more desirable place to live, work and play.
To enable a better work-life balance for residents.

Providing Comments

Please review the draft amended portions of the by-law (we also recommend you read the explanatory document, which demonstrates how the proposed by-law is different from the existing one and describes some of the research and decisions that went into crafting the by-law amendments), then provide your comments either by email to Brandon Slopack or by mail to our Community Planning Division.

In addition to your general feedback, we are interested in the following:

Tell us a little bit about your home-based business and any challenges you've faced that the revised by-law would help address.
Do you have any comments or suggestions for improvements to the draft by-law?
Is there anything that you have learned about running a home-based business as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that might apply to the draft by-law amendments?