Cartersville

Cumberland County does NOT have a standalone accessory-dwelling-unit (ADU) ordinance. Chapter 74 regulates accessory structures and accessory uses generally; Sec. 74-2 (Definitions) and the per-district use tables do not list an explicit 'accessory dwelling' or 'accessory dwelling unit' use category. The county's operative framework is one principal dwelling per lot: a second dwelling on the same parcel is not a listed by-right accessory use and typically requires either (a) subdivision of the parcel into two conforming lots, (b) a conditional use permit, or (c) placement under a farm-structure or family-member provision that Planning & Zoning treats case-by-case. Third-party ADU-marketing websites that state flat numeric caps (e.g., '800 sqft or 35% of primary') for Cumberland County appear to apply generic Virginia-template language rather than primary-source Cumberland ordinance text — the chapter's own quantitative caps are set per-district (setbacks, lot coverage, minimum lot size) rather than through an ADU-specific formula. Accessory structures independent of ADU status have concrete numeric thresholds: any accessory structure exceeding 256 square feet requires a building permit (under 256 sqft requires zoning approval only), and any accessory structure exceeding 600 square feet requires a permanent foundation. Effective 2022-02-01, conversions of sheds to habitable space are prohibited countywide because such structures do not meet Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code minimum standards — this rule closes what had been a common de-facto ADU path of shed conversion. No statewide ADU preemption is in force in Virginia as of 2026-04-21 (per the state-adu-research file, no Virginia General Assembly ADU bill has been enacted through the 2026 regular session); Cumberland's silence on ADUs is therefore the operative rule.

Cumberland County administers three principal overlay regimes that bear on second-dwelling and accessory-structure projects: (1) Floodplain Zoning under Chapter 74 Article XXI, substantively updated by Board of Supervisors Code Amendment CA 24-01 adopted 2024-04-09, tied to the FEMA Flood Insurance Study and Flood Insurance Rate Map for Cumberland County dated 2024-05-22; this overlay reaches the James River corridor on the southern county boundary, the Appomattox River corridor on the northern boundary, the Willis 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) conservation easements held by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, the Virginia Department of Forestry (forestland easements), and other land trusts on a parcel-specific basis; the Cumberland State Forest (16,233 acres managed by the Virginia Department of Forestry including Bear Creek Lake State Park) is a large state-held block in the county, and private easement acreage under Va. Code § 10.1-1009 et seq. (Virginia Conservation Easement Act) and § 10.1-1700 et seq. (Open-Space Land Act) is concentrated in the rural forested and agricultural portions of the county. Cumberland has no coastal-commission jurisdiction (no tidal waters; well outside the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act Tidewater boundary), no statewide WUI regulatory overlay (Virginia has none), no seismic-retrofit overlay (though Cumberland is on the outer edge of the Central Virginia Seismic Zone that caused 2011 damage in Louisa and Albemarle — hazard-awareness only, not a permit-constraining overlay), and no Part 150 airport-noise overlay (no commercial airport inside the county). Cumberland does NOT operate a county-administered local Architectural Review Board for historic districts — the Cumberland Courthouse Historic District (National Register) and other state/national historic listings impose no private-parcel design-review constraint absent a local overlay, which Cumberland has not adopted.

• Floodplain Zoning (Chapter 74 Article XXI, as amended by CA 24-01)
• Conservation Easement Overlay (VOF, VDOF, land trusts) and Cumberland State Forest
• Land Use (use-value) assessment program

An accessory-dwelling or second-dwelling project in Cumberland County routes through two county departments sharing the 1 Courthouse Circle, Cumberland office. Planning & Zoning handles the zoning-permit approval, any required Conditional Use Permit (the likely path for a second dwelling given the absence of a by-right ADU category), Subdivision Application (if subdivision is chosen), or Farm Structure Affidavit (for working-farm contexts). Building Inspection handles the building permit under the 2021 Virginia Construction Code (adopted effective 2024-01-18 following the USBC 2021 cycle), enforces the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code (13 VAC 5-63), and issues trade permits (electrical, plumbing, mechanical). Because Cumberland is rural with limited public water and sewer, 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, which must be in hand before the county will release a building permit. Applications are submitted in person at 1 Courthouse Circle or by email to permits@cumberlandcounty.virginia.gov (building) or the Planning Director's office. New-home building permit applications must be hand-delivered or mailed with all required documentation; the daily application cut-off is 4:00 p.m.