Planning enforcement notice during purchase of property

E7residenttobe

We are about to close our sale and move to exchange of contracts as buyers of our first home. As the owner had a rooftop terrace on the flat non-demised roof we asked the council to confirm if there is any issues with it and they seem to have put forward a planning enforcement as it turns out there out the current seller doesn't have planning permission which we expected it.

Does anyone has experience with having a planning enforcement raised during a purchase of a property? We were told this might take some time to get resolved!

Slithery

E7residenttobe said:

...we asked the council to confirm if there is any issues with it and they seem to have put forward a planning enforcement as it turns out there out the current seller doesn't have planning permission which we expected it.

Well that wasn't a very good idea, now you can't buy indemnity insurance to cover yourself against any action from the council.

PasturesNew

Did you also check if they had freeholder permission?  I've seen ground floor flats extended and above have got a patio up there and I always think "I wonder if they have permission for that"

davidmcn

It's only going to be "resolved" by the vendor undoing the work, or applying for and being granted planning permission (or I suppose by the council changing their mind and deciding they can't be bothered pursuing enforcement). Does any of those options seem likely?

eddddy

E7residenttobe said:

Does anyone has experience with having a planning enforcement raised during a purchase of a property? We were told this might take some time to get resolved!

Will the sellers still want to sell you the property? I'd suspect that they'd be pretty angry with you, if they know it was you that reported them to the council.

Obviously, the sellers broke the rules by creating the roof terrace without planning consent, but they might still think it was spiteful of you to report them - when you could have just walked away, and said nothing to the council. 

But maybe there's a back story, which you haven't mentioned - or maybe you just think it's right that rule-breakers should be reported and punished.

AdrianC

When was this terrace put onto the roof?
Are we literally just talking about some free-standing timber?

Martin_the_Unjust

Planning? I'd be more worried about the lack of building regs.

.....and without building regs approval I would be walking away (big steps and rapid)

baldelectrician

I presume this is down south.
In Scotland the owner is required to comply with the building standards in place when the council find out about the work - not the standards in place when the works were done.

If there was an application then the standards at the date of the application are required.

davidmcn

baldelectrician said:

I presume this is down south.

Given the OP's username I presume we are talking about east London.

E7residenttobe

eddddy said:

E7residenttobe said:

Does anyone has experience with having a planning enforcement raised during a purchase of a property? We were told this might take some time to get resolved!

Will the sellers still want to sell you the property? I'd suspect that they'd be pretty angry with you, if they know it was you that reported them to the council.

Obviously, the sellers broke the rules by creating the roof terrace without planning consent, but they might still think it was spiteful of you to report them - when you could have just walked away, and said nothing to the council. 

But maybe there's a back story, which you haven't mentioned - or maybe you just think it's right that rule-breakers should be reported and punished.

He wanted to sell the property to us and basically put his illegal actions onto us, we went to the council and asked is there any planning permission for the property and if we would go ahead and purchase would we be liable to any action by the council. I would never buy a property where there is any type of ilegal action taken for example building a roof terrace without a terrace and even worst the seller is an architect so he knew all of this!

E7residenttobe

Slithery said:

E7residenttobe said:

...we asked the council to confirm if there is any issues with it and they seem to have put forward a planning enforcement as it turns out there out the current seller doesn't have planning permission which we expected it.

Well that wasn't a very good idea, now you can't buy indemnity insurance to cover yourself against any action from the council.

The seller already put an indemnity policy before we reached out to the council. It's always a good idea to do things legally and respect the law no matter if you are seller, buyer, solicitor, neighbour etc. Rules exist so they can keep us all safe and in line (most of the time )