Buyer's enquiries include a question about next door's planning permission from 1984

samkenn

Hi all,

We are currently in the process of selling our flat and the buyer's enquiries have just come in. All fairly simple but the first one refers to some missing planning permission on next door's property which dates back to 1984. This has apparently come up as a result of their searches. I'm not worried about the enquiry itself, but the fact that it's about a neighbouring property set off an alarm bell. Might the buyer's solicitors have put in the wrong address when they ran the local authority searches? Or do solicitors sometimes search for planning applications on nearby properties as well? If anyone has any experience of this, I'd be very interested to know about it. 

Thanks!

davidmcn

What do they mean by "missing planning permission"? I wouldn't worry about it at this stage anyway, enquiries can include all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. Your solicitor ought to be able to deal with it rather than dumping it on you to puzzle over.

eddddy

Just reply saying what you've said here - that the planning consent does not relate to your property, it relates to a neighbouring property, and you have no information about it.

If you think there has been a mistake, it might get corrected more quickly if you mention it to the EA. The EA can phone the buyer, and the buyer can phone their solicitor.  That might be quicker than feeding-back via solicitors.

greatcrested

"I have no information regarding planning permission for the neighbouring property, number 99."

That both answers the question and highlights that the question does not relate to your property.

samkenn

Thanks all. Yes, my solicitor said not to worry about it, he can easily answer the enquiry. My question was more if solicitors ever (often?) make mistakes and put in the wrong address when doing the searches or if it's more likely they were taking a 'belt and braces' approach and doing a planning search for properties in the vicinity as well as on the property itself. 

davidmcn

samkenn said:

Thanks all. Yes, my solicitor said not to worry about it, he can easily answer the enquiry. My question was more if solicitors ever (often?) make mistakes and put in the wrong address when doing the searches or if it's more likely they were taking a 'belt and braces' approach and doing a planning search for properties in the vicinity as well as on the property itself. 

I'm not sure from what you've told us exactly what their concern is, but it would be more understandable to query "missing" consents for works done to the property being bought rather than the neighbours'. Planning tends to be readily accessible from councils' websites so easy enough for them to look up anything not covered by the (paid for) search over the property itself if they wanted.