Buckingham County

An accessory-dwelling or second-dwelling project in unincorporated Buckingham County routes through two county departments sharing the 13380 West James Anderson Highway office. Planning & Zoning handles the Zoning Permit (the approval that must precede any Building Permit), any required Special Use Permit (the likely path for a detached second dwelling given the absence of a by-right ADU category), Rezoning (if reclassification is needed), Home Occupation Permit, and floodplain development review. Building Inspections handles the Building Permit under the 2021 Virginia Construction Code (adopted into 13 VAC 5-62 with Virginia amendments), enforces the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code (13 VAC 5-63), issues the Mechanical Permit, and coordinates electrical permits (2025 Electrical Permit Application on file at Planning & Zoning). Because Buckingham is overwhelmingly rural with limited public water and sewer (public-utility service is concentrated around the Buckingham Courthouse area, Dillwyn, and the courthouse-area Buckingham County Administration corridor), the Piedmont Health District (Virginia Department of Health local office covering Amelia, Buckingham, Charlotte, Cumberland, Lunenburg, Nottoway, and Prince Edward) issues the well-and-septic construction permit for parcels outside public-utility service areas via a DPOR-licensed private-sector onsite-sewage consultant (required for all applications submitted after 2019-08-11 under the VDH onsite program reform). Applications are submitted in person at 13380 West James Anderson Highway or by email to the Zoning/Planning Administrator (nedmondston@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov) or the Building Official (transon@buckinghamcounty.virginia.gov).

Buckingham County real estate is assessed by the Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue (Ms. Stephanie D. Love, elected constitutional officer) through a contracted third-party mass-appraisal vendor, Wampler-Eanes Appraisal Group (same vendor used for the 2020 reassessment). A general reassessment began 2024-10-09 and runs through October 2025, with new property values effective 2026-01-01; bills reflecting the new values mail in November 2025. A second dwelling or accessory-dwelling addition is captured via the supplemental-assessment process under Va. Code § 58.1-3292: on receipt of the building permit and Certificate of Occupancy from Building Inspections, the Commissioner of the Revenue's office prorates the supplemental assessment from the completion date through the end of the tax year. The primary dwelling is NOT revalued off-cycle as a result of the accessory-dwelling addition; only the new improvement is added at its assessed fair-market value. Between reassessment cycles, the Commissioner of the Revenue's office handles all real-estate assessment activity (new construction, subdivisions, zoning changes) in-house.

Assessment policy: A second dwelling or accessory structure added to a Buckingham County parcel is captured as a real-estate improvement under Va. Code Title 58.1 Subtitle III Chapter 32, specifically as a supplemental assessment under § 58.1-3292. On receipt of the building permit and Certificate of Occupancy from Building Inspections, the Commissioner of the Revenue's office adds the new improvement at its assessed fair-market value on top of the existing parcel land and improvement value. The existing primary dwelling is NOT revalued off-cycle. Buckingham has no ADU-specific assessment exemption or carve-out. Standard Virginia real-estate tax-relief programs apply: elderly and disabled relief under Va. Code § 58.1-3210 (local option implemented by Buckingham), disabled-veteran exemption under § 58.1-3219.5, and the Land Use (use-value) assessment program under § 58.1-3230 et seq. for qualifying agricultural, horticultural, forest, and open-space parcels. Real-estate supplemental assessments under § 58.1-3292 prorate from the completion date through the tax year-end.

Buckingham County administers three principal overlay regimes that bear on second-dwelling and accessory-structure projects: (1) Floodplain Zoning administered by Zoning/Planning Administrator Nicci Edmondston as Floodplain Administrator, tied to the FEMA Flood Insurance Study and Flood Insurance Rate Map for Buckingham County; this overlay reaches the James River corridor on the northern and western boundaries (the James is a State Scenic River for approximately 57 miles along Buckingham from Allens Creek to Stearnes per Va. Code § 10.1-413), the Appomattox River corridor and its tributary Holliday Creek on the southern boundary, the Willis River, the Slate River, and their tributaries. (2) the Land Use (use-value) assessment program administered by the Commissioner of the Revenue under Va. Code § 58.1-3230, which does not restrict ADU construction but can be breached by one, removing the deferred-assessment benefit and triggering up to six years of rollback taxes. (3) the James River State Scenic River corridor under Va. Code § 10.1-413, which establishes scenic-river status for the segment between Allens Creek and Stearnes running along Buckingham's northern/western boundary — this does not itself restrict private construction on riparian parcels but signals state-level interest in the corridor that often attracts conservation-easement activity. Buckingham has no coastal-commission jurisdiction (no tidal waters; well outside the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act Tidewater boundary — the James main stem upriver of Richmond is not CBPA-covered). Virginia has no statewide WUI regulatory overlay (the state has substantial wildfire risk in its forested counties — and Buckingham is heavily forested — but no permit-constraining WUI overlay). Buckingham sits south of the Central Virginia Seismic Zone that caused 2011 damage in Louisa and Albemarle — hazard-awareness only, not a permit-constraining overlay. There is no FAA Part 150 airport-noise overlay (the nearest commercial airport, Richmond International, does not reach Buckingham; the nearest general-aviation airport is Farmville Regional in Prince Edward County). Buckingham does NOT operate a county-administered local Architectural Review Board for historic districts — National Register-listed sites in the county (including properties associated with the Historic Village at Lee Wayside and Civil War Lee Retreat Route stops) impose no private-parcel design-review constraint absent a local overlay, which Buckingham has not adopted.

• Floodplain Zoning (NFIP-participating community ordinance)
• Land Use (use-value) assessment program
• James River State Scenic River corridor (Va. Code § 10.1-413)