Garage and building regs

ohdarn

Hi everyone. A new (and possibly final) chapter has opened in our sorry tale of Moving House.
I'll try and keep it as short as possible.
We have a wooden garage attached to the front of our house that we built about eleven years ago.
At the time we contacted the council and were told that we'd need planning permission.
So we applied for planning permission and it was granted.
We were told that since it was a temporary structure we would not need a building regulation certificate.
Now our buyers solicitor wants to know if it has a buildings regulations certificate.
We told them it doesn't and asked our conveyancer if it should have a buildings regulations certificate and they thought it shouldn't.
But they buyers solicitor was insistent that it should have.
This is the point where we've probably messed it up.
So we thought we'd ring the council to ask if it should.
They didn't know.
They passed us onto a different council for clarification.
They said they didn't know but would come out to have a look.
I googled it this morning and found a page that says a simple, cheap, indemnity insurance can be taken out for this sort of scenario.
But you can't take one out if you've contacted the council to ask if you need one.
So what do we do now?
I'm absolutely sick of this whole thing, I really am.

Carrot007

It does not need one any more than a shed does.

However it may be easier to buy the (pointless) indemnity if it moves things on.

ohdarn

But I've read that the indemnity can't be taken out if someone has contacted the council to ask if building regs are required?

Carrot007

ohdarn said:

But I've read that the indemnity can't be taken out if someone has contacted the council to ask if building regs are required?

Indeed, but since they are pointless anyway if it shuts the stupid questions up.

So tell them it is not needed and they are being ridiculous if it helps. Also tell them if they do not agreee quickly the price goes up. Might move them on. Of course you do not knwo this is coming from the solicitor, they should have a clue, maybe nonsense from the buyer though them.

user1977

ohdarn said:

We were told that since it was a temporary structure we would not need a building regulation certificate.

Who did the telling?

ohdarn said:

So what do we do now?

Either get retrospective certification or tell the buyers they'll need to take a view on it. The council's never going to pop round and demand they tear it down. Your solicitor should be guiding you through this anyway.

ohdarn

user1977 said:

ohdarn said:

We were told that since it was a temporary structure we would not need a building regulation certificate.

Who did the telling?

ohdarn said:

So what do we do now?

Either get retrospective certification or tell the buyers they'll need to take a view on it. The council's never going to pop round and demand they tear it down. Your solicitor should be guiding you through this anyway.

It was the council at the time of its construction. 
Retrospective certification sounds expensive.
Yes I believe it's outside the timescales to demand it be taken down (although I think they could still issue an unsafe building order or something like that).

user1977

ohdarn said:

user1977 said:

ohdarn said:

We were told that since it was a temporary structure we would not need a building regulation certificate.

Who did the telling?

ohdarn said:

So what do we do now?

Either get retrospective certification or tell the buyers they'll need to take a view on it. The council's never going to pop round and demand they tear it down. Your solicitor should be guiding you through this anyway.

Yes I believe it's outside the timescales to demand it be taken down (although I think they could still issue an unsafe building order or something like that).

But in practice, building control simply don't wander the streets enforcing stuff (unless something is actually a danger to the public, but that would apply no matter the age or whether it originally was approved).

ohdarn

Except we had arranged for the building control guy to come and look at it?
We can cancel that but the issue is that since we've contacted the council to ask about it, will we still be able to arrange indemnity cover?
And if we can't arrange indemnity cover, what happens then?

user1977

ohdarn said:

Except we had arranged for the building control guy to come and look at it?
We can cancel that but the issue is that since we've contacted the council to ask about it, will we still be able to arrange indemnity cover?
And if we can't arrange indemnity cover, what happens then?

They were going to look at it for the purposes of retrospectively approving it. It doesn't mean they'll otherwise condemn it.

No, indemnity cover is not going to be valid if you've recently contacted the council.

As above, either it's retrospectively approved or your buyers just accept the position as it is (possibly as suggested above it doesn't actually need BR approval at all).

If the worst case scenario was removing the garage, how much would that affect the overall value of the property, if it was merely a "temporary structure"?

ohdarn

Reading the current guidelines, I would assume that it does need a building regulations certificate as it's less than 1m from the house.
I guess we'll just have to tell the buyer that we haven't got one and that's that.
Taking it down would attract certain buyers but put off others.
Also, it would be a massive pain to do.

Mistral001

All you can do is wait until the Building Control officer comes out.  Please keep us updated.