Does anyone know much about the Building Regulation Completions Cert for a property?

gcpbuyer

Has anyone had any experience with getting building regulation completion certifications from the council? How long it takes etc.

I'm purchasing a property but there's a hold up because of this. 

The seller does not hold a copy of the completion certs, so we asked our search providers to make enquiries. 

However, the search providers can't confirm whether the  completion certs highlighted in the local search apply to the property without obtaining the certs from the council (at a cost of around £50 per certificate).

So we will need to ask the sellers solicitors to make enquiries with the council to confirm whether the completion certificates apply to the property, and obtain a copy from the council.

fiveacre

The council should be able to provide a copy for a fee - though to be honest it's not likely to give you much more information than you can get from the planning portal on the local council site, if they make building control information available. Does it show as works complete on there? If so, then nothing to worry about.

What works is this for, and how long ago were they?

user1977

The timescales will depend on the current workloads of the relevant council - so unless you tell us who that is (and somebody here knows), I doubt we can help. If your solicitor has dealt with the council recently they might know.

I don't understand though why the search results are ambiguous, as generally if it tells you there's a completion certificate, you shouldn't need to see the certificate itself - can you explain exactly what the search says?

gcpbuyer

fiveacre said:

The council should be able to provide a copy for a fee - though to be honest it's not likely to give you much more information than you can get from the planning portal on the local council site, if they make building control information available. Does it show as works complete on there? If so, then nothing to worry about.

What works is this for, and how long ago were they?

I think this is for the actual building to make sure it passed some building regulation tests. The building is about 7 years old. 

I found a building control summary for the property: new full electrical installation (new build) and it says building works complete. I honestly don't know too much about this though.  

gcpbuyer

user1977 said:

The timescales will depend on the current workloads of the relevant council - so unless you tell us who that is (and somebody here knows), I doubt we can help. If your solicitor has dealt with the council recently they might know.

I don't understand though why the search results are ambiguous, as generally if it tells you there's a completion certificate, you shouldn't need to see the certificate itself - can you explain exactly what the search says?

The council is Tower Hamlets in London

The solicitor said:
"The search providers said they can't confirm whether the completion certificates for the building regulations highlighted in the local search apply to the property without obtaining the certificates from the council. The cost of obtaining a certificate is £48.50"

So I guess it sounds like they have some completion certs for building regs but they don't know if it applies to the property...until they get certs from the council?