No building regs and or completion certificate

Blush2783

Hi, am waiting to hear back from our solicitor who is currently in a meeting but thought if anyone can shed some light on this in the meantime it might help me not go into melt down!

We put in an offer at the end of last month on a detached property that has been extended in all directions and into the loft by the current owners. This was done in 2007.

This morning I received the local authority searches in the post and it seems that they were granted conditional planning permission. They obviously built it all and we are now hoping to buy it however our solicitor has just emailed me a response from their solicitor to things we had raised, one of which was to provide the Building regs approval and completion certificate for all the works done. They have just put "no such documentation available" and in the next sentence asked when we are likely to be ready for exchange?!???

This is ringing major alarm bells in my mind and am now panicking. I can understand that all these things might not be available when properties had been extended years ago but 2007? I thought this was law from 2002? Our current property had extensions done by the people we purchased it from many years earlier and they were all there and approved.

The vendor is a builder and I'm sure did lots of the work himself so I cannot fathom out why they don't have this unless it didn't meet the conditions of the planning permission?

Obviously lots to ask the solicitor but has anyone else been in this situation?

Thanks

davidmcn

Blush2783 wrote: »

Obviously lots to ask the solicitor but has anyone else been in this situation?

Search for many previous threads with similar tales, including several involving sellers who happen to be builders. Older work might not be a concern but if it's all from 2007 then it will need sorted one way or another.

eddddy

Blush2783 wrote: »

am waiting to hear back from our solicitor who is currently in a meeting

LOL... Day 1, lesson 1 in the school for legal secretaries 'How to answer the phone'...


Anyway - as davidmcn suggests, read the many other threads on this.

If you decide you still want to proceed, some considerations are

- you might want to get a surveyor to report on the quality of the building work.

- you (or the vendor) might have to pay for indemnity insurance, to keep your mortgage lender happy.

- you might find the property harder to re-sell in due course, because buyers get alarmed by this, and because there is less guarantee that the building work was done well.


For these reasons, I would say the property is worth slightly less than if it had building regs sign-off.

Hoploz

Your solicitor should be able to do a search which may reveal whether building regs application was ever put in. However if they never issued a completion certificate there could be any number of reasons.

Building inspector may have made all necessary visits but something missed off which they never bothered doing (eg I had not fitted an extractor in my utility room) or there could be something more fundamental not done. You won't know.

A surveyor can't tell whether it complies, it requires opening up, so they can only see if any problems have actually occurred.

You may decide you're happy to proceed but your lender is likely to require an indemnity policy to protect themselves in future. This can be passed on to your buyer when you sell.

sheramber

When we viewed our current house the sellers volunteered that they had converted the attic but had not got a completion certificate but knew they had to get one. They had got planning permission for the conversion.

The bungalow had been built with provision to covert the attic so it was just a case of opening up the ceiling, installing a staircase and fitting it out.

The house was inspected and three points were raised- lack of ventilation in the roof, treads on the open stair were too far apart and the glass in the front door was not safety glass.

The work was estimated at £800 which sum was retained by our solicitor until the work was done and passed.

The seller had to arrange for this work to be done.

Once it was done( after we moved in) building control inspected the work and then sent a letter of comfort to our solicitor. It was too long since the original work was done to get a completion certificate.

Our solicitor then release the retained money to the sellers.

AdrianC

It might meet BR, it might not.
It might have been done well, it might not.
Whether those are issues for you are totally separate from the risk of any paperwork issues due to the lack of BR sign-off. One thing's for sure - there's nothing the council can do about it - far too long ago.

Since an indemnity policy only pays the legal costs in the event of the council trying to do something about it, it's utterly pointless.

Mrs_pbradley936

I would not be exchanging until this was all sorted out.

Any building work has to have permission and be inspected at intervals to make sure that it is safe and up to a given standard. If the criterion is not met I doubt you would get a mortgage on the place. Even if you are a cash buyer you may run into trouble when you want to sell it.

fezster

Is the property in a conservation area or a listed building? If neither, then building regs cannot be enforced after 2 years (you may want to confirm this, as it can vary by region). Planning permission seems to have been granted, but you need to check the work complies with the planning. Again, though, planning can only be enforced within 4 years (confirm this with your solicitor).

Your lender will be happy with indemnity policies, but regardless of these, YOU need to be satisfied the work has been done to an acceptable standard. This is very difficult to do without intrusive inspections (eg. how do you check the depth of any foundations). If it's been standing for 9 years without any sign of movement, you may feel comfortable enough to proceed. You could also insist the sellers apply to the council for a regularisation certificate, so that all of the paperwork is in order. They will be reluctant to do this, I'm sure.

Herbalus

Not having the certificate doesn't mean the job wasn't inspected, but then again you can't know either way.

My experience (I had major works completed at Christmas), was that the builder called building control round at regular intervals to check various things, but only when tidying up paperwork a few weeks ago I realised there was no certificate. Turned out the builder had never arranged the completion inspection, so building control didn't know the work was completed. I'm now getting them back to issue the certificate.

So a search on my house currently would show planning permission and instructing building control, but no certificate as yet.

m0bov

I would not continue unless you have a certificate, you'll be mad not too!

Blush2783

Thank you very much everybody for all your replies. Cant believe how stressful it all is. We've moved twice before and have never had as many issues as this time. We love the house but the majority of people I have spoken to seem to be telling us that without the building regs approval we should walk away unless the current vendors sort it all out.

All the extensions have virtually doubled the size of the house and converted the loft into a 'master suite' so we aren't talking about a small amount of work. I'm beginning to think we will have to pull out but will be devastated and really fed up that they didn't mention it before as on the Law society property information form they'd put 'to follow'. No mention of them not existing and our solicitor requested them in writing again over a month ago. We would have never put in an offer if we had known they didn't have approval as we have also been told that mortgage lenders wouldn't be happy so if we wanted to sell in the future we could have issues too and it may well invalidate house insurance.

What was really quite funny was the Estate Agent called me yesterday saying the chain wanted to move the exchange date forward to next week!!!! I said without the certificates we wont be doing anything and the EA said 'oh they have all of those and they are being sent on to your solicitor'. I have no idea how she can think its such a minor issue and surely if they existed they would be listed on the local authority search which currently shows a big fat blank space under that heading.

Anyway, lets see what they send our solicitor......and thanks again for taking the time to respond.