Illegal loft conversion conundrum

scros

HELP - I need some advice. We’ve bought a maisonette that was marketed and sold to us as a 3 bedroom property. The main (in our eyes) bedroom is a loft room. We asked and asked our lawyer to double check all was fine with it, plus the survey said she should confirm the correct consents had been received. Her response was that everything was fine - the room was definitely ours and if we needed any work done to meet modern building regs, we had indemnity insurance to cover it.

We moved in and decided to put in an extra velux window, so to be safe we asked the Building Inspector to come round and give the OK – he immediately said the room was unsafe and that the floor would need re-doing. A 2 minute phone call later, we find out it's a completely illegal room. Now, to be positive, they are not going to make us rip it out and are very keen to help us end up with a fully compliant room. But it's going to cost us a fortune (need steels in the floor etc) and I don’t think our indemnity insurance covers it as we went to the council ourselves and the room is so old that we’re not being enforced to do anything.

Some advice would be helpful on 2 matters:

1.Is the estate agent not liable in any way for marketing and selling a 3 bedroom property that it turns out clearly is not 3 beds. I assume they'll claim that it's solely down to our solicitor to sort.

2.Did we just receive bad advice from our solicitor? Can we sue?

Is there anything we can do – we don’t really feel that we’ve done much wrong at all – possibly been naïve and relied totally on the advice / honesty of others. But we've clearly bought a 2 bed flat with a loft space for the price of a 3 bed - plus to sort it out it could leave us even more out of pocket (circa £20k at recent guesstimate).

Help / advice gratefully received.

Cheers, Stu

<sebb>

If you asked your lawyer to confirm it was all ok what did they say? I'm currently buying at the moment and have my serious doubts that planning and building regs were complied with in the loft and I'm not leaving anything up to chance. I'm asking to see all the relevant certificates myself.

I wouldnt have thought it was the EAs job to double check the planning etc, but definitely for your solicitor to deal with!

Pee

I think your solicitor made it "ok" by obtaining the indemnity insurance. You have voided that by going to the council. The question is did your solicitor explain the indemnity insurance properly to you, or not.

G_M

EA is not reposible. H'e not a specialist in the area and it is up to buyers to check. That's why solicitors exist (well, one reason!).

Solicitor may be liable. What have you got in writing from them? What exactly did they tell you? If he told you all the necessary Planning/Building Regs approvals were in place (and preferably if he put it in writing) then you have a strong case against the solicitors. Otherwise, see Pee's post above!

I've never understood this indemnity insurance business. Yes, you're insured against enforcement by the council (unless you act to void the policy..!) but it doesn't guarantee the building work is safe! Or the cost of making it so.

Building Regs are there for a purpose - to ensure extensions, conversions etc are not 'bodge jobs'. All getting round the Bulding Regs achieves is.... bodge jobs.

scros

Thanks for your comments. I think that the key thing seems to be the lack of explanation about what the insurance actually covers and how it works. I'd need to check back but I don't think it was ever expressly stated that all relevant consents had been recieved.

However, even since moving in we've continued to speak to the solicitor and been basically told "we covered all this before - you own that space as freeholders and your insurance covers any work to come up to modern standards".
But surely, in order to find out what those standards are (and what work is required to meet them), you have to get Building Regs involved - which in turn seems to void the insurance.

Bottom line - we assumed we had a safe, habitable room and just wanted to put in another velux to get more light (and a bit more insulation to make it warmer). We weren't necessarilly expecting to get this done on insurance anyway. However, the inspector walks in and within 2 minutes we've actually got a very unsafe and illegal loft space.

It just feels as if we're trying to do everything by the book and ending up with 2 choices - risk living in an unsafe room or spend an absolute fortune to get a 3 bed property (which we thought we'd bought anyway).

Am I just being silly? Have we basically just made a mess of this and need to bite the bullet?

ninky_2

scros wrote: »

Have we basically just made a mess of this and need to bite the bullet?

in short. yes.

the estate agent is not liable since they always say that details given are as a "guide".

the solicitor never told you that the consents had been obtained only that if the council enforced anything insurance would cover it.

if you want to feel happy that the loft room meets building regs you will have to pay for the work.

sorry.

G_M

It sounds like you have been poorly advised by the solicitors. You (forgive me here for exagerating) as innocent, naive, ignorant buyers relied on your solicitors to give you advice and reassurance.

They may have actually mis-advised you (unlikely and hard to prove without an unambiguous letter from them), or more likely simply communicated with you poorly. In the latter case, again hard to prove: 'we told you xyz'. "yes, but I didn't understand it meant abc!......

The best you can hope for, I think is:

1) gather all evidence you can - correspondance related to this from the solicitors etc
2) make notes of everything you can remember them telling you, + dates, who said it, and how (phone? face-to-face? etc)

then look up and follow their complaints procedure and see what happens. But don't be too optimistic!

scros

Thanks again everyone - it makes me feel sick to think that we've wasted all this money but I do genuinely appreciate your advice. Ultimately, the hope is that we'll end up with a lovely place done to a great standard - plus we'll have all the documentation - so who knows, we may end up getting our money back in the long run.

Hey you never know - I may be back on here in a few weeks telling you that the little man has won for once and I'm in the posession of a nice bumper cheque from the socilitors...and pigs may fly.

Thanks again

sunshinetours

Maybe get a structural engineer / surveyor to make sure the conversion is actually safe?

silvercar

However, the inspector walks in and within 2 minutes we've actually got a very unsafe and illegal loft space.

Illegal to call it a bedroom may be. Is it unsafe? You don't know until you get a structural engineer to take a look. There is a massive difference between being safe and satisfying building regs. Anything built more than a couple of years ago won't satisfy current building regs, doesn't mean the building is unsafe.

You can still get the window installed and building regs approval, even if the room that it is in doesn't satisfy building regs!

Sammy85_2

I would check that it is actually "unsafe" too.

Ours is "unsafe" purely because it doesnt have the appropriate fire door, apart from that it is perfectly safe and meets all the other building regs.