Loft has no building regs. How do we proceed?

BLC1983

To be honest I don't know if he is a trainee as it's all done over the phone and online so I've never met him. Makes me realise in the future to go with someone you can speak to face to face.

Yes it is worrying that he doesn't know where to go from here. I'm Hopefully going to find out tomorrow how we do proceed because this seems to be dragging on a little now.

So just to clarify, if they vendor is saying that the conversion was done in 1983 do I just take their word for that? Because how do I know it wasn't in fact done maybe 10 years ago?

Doozergirl

I can't answer this. What is going to happen? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

If it was done 10 years ago it wouldn't have needed the roof replacing now. If the conversion was 'new' they wouldn't have involved building control this time around either because there would be something to hide. The roof only needs signing off for new insulation - a straight replacement of the covering doesn't need it and you don't need sign off for insulation that already exists - even an idiot would have put insulation in a roof 10 years ago.

Building Control aren't bothered, they've signed off your roof. You think the conversion is safe.

What about the house? It has no foundations. How bothered is your solicitor about that?

You have to put these things into perspective.

If anyone chooses to believe it's later than 1983 then they can purchase an indemnity policy against the non-existent risk of enforcement action.

There's only so many times I can say the same thing in a different way.

societys_child

Your conveyancer's a nutter . .

markin

Would you not need BC for the new insulation and new plasterboard?

If that is what was signed off with the roof job then the only things left is fire safety, is the plasterboard below the attic double layer for 30min? Smoke Alarms? Are fire doors needed?

The Google earth Pro program has a history function, usually going back to around the year 2000 and all the different years it was shot.

https://www.google.co.uk/earth/download/gep/agree.html

BLC1983

Would the floor not need signing off if that was something which was done now days?

What would be interesting is to see if there is any insulation under the floorboards. If not and we choose to put new insulation in the floor will that need signing off?

Thanks for the link btw to the Google thing! That could be quite helpful.

BLC1983

So I spoke to the solicitor today and he has said as the property doesn't have building regs (Even though it doesn't need them as the conversion it turns out was done in 1982) he has to report it to our mortgage lender. They may decide not to lend us the money after all of this

Has anyone else ever come across this? Do mortgage lenders tend to retract their offers? Btw it is the bank of Ireland.

Surrey_EA

IMHO it’s very unlikely the lender will refuse to lend.

They may go back to the valuer to ask if it affects the valuation and/or ask for a lack of building regs indemnity policy.

davidmcn

BLC1983 wrote: »

They may decide not to lend us the money after all of this

Is that what your solicitor actually said? Honestly, he doesn't sound like he has a clue.

The bank will not care in the slightest. Unless their valuer raised specific concerns, they'll be happy if the solicitor tells them that they're getting an indemnity policy.

In fact, if the bank uses the standard CML mortgage instructions, the solicitor just needs to get the indemnity policy, they don't even need to discuss it with the bank.

Doozergirl

davidmcn wrote: »

Is that what your solicitor actually said? Honestly, he doesn't sound like he has a clue.

The bank will not care in the slightest. Unless their valuer raised specific concerns, they'll be happy if the solicitor tells them that they're getting an indemnity policy.

In fact, if the bank uses the standard CML mortgage instructions, the solicitor just needs to get the indemnity policy, they don't even need to discuss it with the bank.

Agreed.

Escalate this. Your solicitor is a drama queen who needs to get used to this situation as it's one of the most common subject threads on this board and therefore must be high up the list of common issues for a conveyancing solicitor to deal with. If he doesn't know how to deal with it, he's clueless.

BLC1983

Apparently he said the reason he is reporting it is because in the mortgage documents it does say that they notice there is a loft conversion and they have asked for building regs certificates. He said even if I asked him not to tell the mortgage company he still has to.

The solicitor has sorted out the indemnity policy already and is getting us to sign a disclaimer saying that we can't hold them responsible if anything went wrong with the loft.

It now means we are going to have to wait for the mortgage lenders decision and who knows how long that could take