Florida's Private Provider Statute, Updated for HB 803

Florida Statute §553.791 lets property owners hire a licensed private provider, engineer or architect, to handle plan review and inspections instead of waiting in the building department's queue. HB 803 (Chapter 2026-63), effective July 1, 2026, updated the statute's structure and added a new fast track. Here's what changed and what stayed the same.

What the private provider statute does. Under §553.791, a private provider performs plan review, inspections, or both, on behalf of the property owner, and the results are submitted to the local building official. The building department still issues the permit and retains oversight, but the private provider absorbs the review workload and works to a statutory deadline instead of a discretionary queue.

What HB 803 changed. HB 803 renumbered several subsections of §553.79 and §553.791 and added a new completeness-review provision. It also amended §553.792 to add a 5-business-day, $15,000-and-under existing single-family residential fast track for smaller projects. The deemed-approved plan review timeframe itself is still governed by the same core mechanism: miss the deadline, and the permit issues automatically.

HB 803 also added a standalone fast track under §553.792 for smaller jobs that don't go through a private provider at all: a local government must act within 5 business days on an existing single-family residential permit where the work is valued under $15,000. This is separate from the private provider timelines above, no private provider is involved, the local government's own reviewer handles it, but the same statutory deadline and deemed-approved consequence apply. Don't confuse this with HB 803's separate $7,500 permit exemption, which removes the permit requirement entirely for qualifying small jobs; the $15,000 track still requires a permit, just on a fast statutory clock.

Why the renumbering matters. If you're reading an older private provider letter, checklist, or contract that cites old subsection numbers, they don't match the current statute anymore. A permit filed before July 1, 2026 is still governed by the pre-HB 803 version. Anything filed after that date falls under the renumbered, current statute. Knowing which version applies to your project matters more than most people realize when a dispute ends up in front of a building official.

Where zoning fits in. A common misconception is that the deemed-approved clock covers everything a jurisdiction reviews. It doesn't. §553.791 governs Building Code Services review specifically. Zoning and fire approval have to be part of a complete application, but they're reviewed on their own agency track, separate from the private provider deadline.

Escalation if a building department pushes back. When a jurisdiction disputes a private provider submission or ignores the statutory deadline, §553.775(3)(a) and (3)(c) and §120.565 are the correct escalation mechanisms under the Florida Building Code. These aren't well known outside the compliance world, and citing the right one is often the difference between a building official taking a dispute seriously and dismissing it.