Does getting Indemnity Insurance for lack of Building Regs de-value your house???

justness

Hi - This is my first post so be gentle!
We're having a nightmare:( We want to sell our house but when we came to getting our Building Reg's signed off for an extension we had 7 years ago, we've hit a stalemate with Local Authority regarding our footings.
The LA inform us that they told our builders (who are no longer in business) that they should get a structural engineer in to sign off the footings - even though they had dug down 3 Metres! - something to do with the fact that the houses were backfilled and they were concerned about subsidence. It's only a single story extension in place of a garage that was already there - so no need for Planning Permission. We weren't party to this conversation with the builders and so when the LA came and did 3 or 4 further inspections of the extension when it was built could see no issues. Until now when we want sign off!
I have written to them several times but they're not budging - insisting we have 2 options - 1) either get in a structural engineer and re-dig down to the footings to inspect or 2) Get Indemnity Insurance for the works.
It will be very difficult to do 1) as we have no access to the back of the property (only through our kitchen extension!)
Anyway... if we were to go for Indemnity Insurance do you think we would get less money for the house when we come to sell???
Hope someone can help!

Yorkie1

Have you asked your solicitor about this?

I don't think you can get indemnity insurance now that you've spoken to the council. It usually relates to enforcement by the council in the event that they find out about the B Regs breach at a later date.

G_M

Why on earth did you not get the BR sign off at the time?

I see no reason why the Buildings Inspectors should 'budge'. If they specified a certain depth of footings, then
a) it was you/your builder's responsibility to dig footings to that depth and
b) it was you/your builder's responsibility to ensure the footings were inspected by an accredited person (Building Inspector/ structuralengineer) in order to get the certificate.

So again, just because you failed to do one or both of the above, why should the Inspectors now say "Oh OK. Actually we don't care whether the footings are 1 metre or 3 metres. Here's your certificate!"

As said above, now that the local autority has been alerted, any indemnity insurance would be invalidated/useless.

Get digging!

justness

G_M - The building inspectors didn't specify a certain depth for the footings, only that we need to find existing footings, which after digging down 3 Metres they still didn't find - & yes I agree that it was our or the builders responsibility to make sure the footings were inspected by an accredited person. The building inspector did inspect the footings on more than one occasion but at no point did he mention to me the need for a structural engineer! His only discussion about this was with my incompetent builder. So how can I ensure this happens if I didn't know anything about it! That is why I'm miffed with Building Control.
I will speak to my solicitor RE the indemnity insurance though, but a the LA advised me on this option I didn't think there would be any issues. Looks like we may need to find an alternative solution!

Richard_Webster

Leaving aside the obvious point that you can't get indemnity insurance if the Council know about the issue, a buyer is going to be more concerned about the background than the existence or otherwise of a policy.

Usually policies are taken out to cover points where there is some technical breach a few yaers back or the seller simply doesn't know whether the work complies or not but the buyers are not concerned. Here there seems to be some reason for concern.

justness

Thanks Richard. I think we'll have to find a way to dig down and hopefully try & get some sign off from a structural engineer. Sounds like the only option.