Building Regs and Nightmare Conveyancer

Richard_Webster

I'm a Conveyancing Solicitor (http://www.rwco.co.uk) so can I clarify stuff a bit?

There are two separate issues.

1. Is the work up to standard? Will there be problems with it physically in the future? Having a Building Regulation Completion certificate obviously gives some degree of reassurance in this respect. Other reassurance is getting a surveyor to check to see if it appears to have been done properly. Remember if the work had been carried out as part of the original construction of the building maybe 50-100 years ago it might well be of a standard that was acceptable then but which is sub-standard now. So you can get people complaining about an extension or other work that is 90% OK for modern regulations and therefore doesn't pass, yet other parts of the same building might only be 50% OK but nobody would worry about that. If I was buying I would want a surveyor to tell me whether he considered there was a signficant problem for my comfort and enjoyment of the property, regardless of whether or not it met the regulations. If he said it was about 90% OK I would want to know what difference the other 10% made.

2. Will anyone take enforcement action because the regulations have not been met? In most cases for work in a domestic property this is exceeedingly unlikely. A Council's simplest method of enforcement is a prosection in the local magistrates' court and they can't do that if the work is more than 12 months old. In theory, after that they can go to a civil court for an injunction to have the work undone, but it would be such a wind up for the Council to do it in terms of use of staff resources and be so politically unpopular (imagine the local papers having a field day!) that they simply wouldn't bother. (I used to work in a Council's legal department so I know!).

The Building Regulation Indemnity Policy only protects against the costs of defending enforcement action and perhaps any necessary reinstatement costs. It does not pay out if you suffer loss as a result of the work being badly done and not in accordance with the Regulations so to that extent it is quite useless. You can't get the insurance if anyone has talked to the Council about the work! Your solicitor should have explained this. It allows the transaction to prioceed, but as you rightly assume, it does not do anything about the condition of the work.

The problem solicitors have is that lenders seem to want everything just so and unlike a lay client who can have a small risk factor explained to them and agree to accept it, the lenders want it all cut and dried. If we write to a lender saying that some work has been done and we have not seen the completion certificate the people who get the letter won't really understand what we are on about and will refer it to their surveyor or it will be passed around the office for weeks. So the Indemnity Policy is a way of avoiding talking to the lender and delaying things still further. It doesn't really have much more use than that!

If the Building Inspector is likely to want plaster removed and other disruptive investigations to see if the work complies then your sellers may well resist this because they will think that you might not go ahead and they will then be stuck with having spent the money only to find that they now have to get it right at some cost to them and you then decide to pull out. It may be that in the real world another buyer wouldn't be so concerned so they don't feel they want to spend the money on getting it right for you.

Your solicitor should have explained these kinds of factors and also should have required the seller to provide a consent from the freeholder for the work.

ab7167

Could you call Building Control in your area and ask them what kind of investigation they would want to undertake to issue retrospective compliance? They may be able to offer advice without you giving them the address of the property.

Also, how long ago was this work carried out? Be aware that if you insist on retrospective compliance (which I certainly would do, by the way!) then you will have to comply with the CURRENT regulations, not those that were in force at the time the work was done. There have been several changes to the regulations in the past few years (the last change affecting structural work was effective 1st December 2004, more recent ones were to do with electrical work and insulation).

What the Building Inspector will do is ask the following questions:

a) Do the alterations alter the load path throught the structure? (obviously yes, if it is a load bearing wall)

b) Do the proposed alterations enable the loads to be carried to ground safely?

c) Can the foundations support the change in loading?

The Approved Documents (Part A for Structures) do not in themselves refer to any British Standards, it is up to the designer to satisfy building control that the above questions can be answered. I have designed structures that do not conform directly to any British Standard, but that have been perfectly acceptable to Building Control as I can prove that the above questions can be answered.

Sorry if the above is a bit too much information about Building Regulations. Basically, if the load paths have been changed, a structural engineer should have been consulted to provide those answers. If this has not happened, I would imagine that Building Control would require a submission that satisfactorily answered them. May require intrusive investigation to look at the size of the steel (or concrete) lintel, the bearings and the connection to the floor above.

Hope that helps.

Ali

cwcw

Thanks for your replies. We received a letter yesterday from our solicitor with a copy of a letter sent from the vendor's solicitor, which seemed to infer that they've backed down and will be getting it sorted at last. Why didn't they just do that 3 and a half months ago when we first asked? Seems like it needed the actual clear threat of pulling out to force their hand.

Doozergirl

Fingers crossed you might be moving finally!

Well done on not backing down

cwcw

Doozergirl wrote:

Fingers crossed you might be moving finally!

Well done on not backing down

Thanks, although we don't want to count all our chickens just yet :money: .

CB1979_2

let's hope they're not using one of their surveyors!!!

I'm assuming all the other work has checked out ok, plumbing/gas/elecs, etc?

if they've bodged something so transparant, i dread to think what's hiding under the floor/in the ceiling!

but good luck, hope it all works out for you.