Surveyor says that stairs to loft conversion don't meet building regs - what do I do?

eddddy

It would be useful to find out what the back-story around the loft conversion is. It's likely to be something like this:

There wasn't enough room to install a building regs complaint staircase. So the owner had 2 choices:

1. Do a loft conversion which isn't compliant with building regs
2. Don't do a loft conversion

So the owner chose option 1.

So the house is what it is - a house with a loft conversion without building regs sign off. You have to decide if you want to buy it and/or how much you want to pay.

It's very possible that the loft conversion doesn't meet other current building regs requirements, like headroom, structural strength/stability, insulation, escape from fire, etc.

You can arrange a specialist survey to investigate those things if you want, or you can make your own judgement. (A specialist survey probably won't be able to give you 100% of the answers - but it might make you feel more comfortable or less comfortable.)

Section62

Bendy_House said:

What are the chances the builder bodged the structure when he was living there himself? Remote, I'd have thought.

People who know a bit about something tend to be overconfident in their own abilities.  Many builders are convinced they know better than structural engineers and BCO's.  Some do, but the majority don't.

It is fairly easy if you know a bit about something to take the view that 'It will do', without actually knowing whether it will or not.

The whole idea of BC is to have someone independent who can check and challenge the design and implementation to make sure it is done properly.

The builder living in the property is probably unlikely to have made any difference.  The counter point is if you are doing the work for yourself there is less comeback (i.e. not having your backside sued off) if you get it wrong.

Bendy_House said:

He most likely didn't bother with BRs because he didn't want the expense of changing the layout in order to make it all conform. A 'little' bit more conforming - eg correct stairwell angle - can mean a LOT of extra work.

Complying with building regs is not optional though.

If a layout doesn't comply with the regs the correct thing to do is to change the layout.  Not ignore the regs and approval process.

I'd agree that making changes can involve a lot of work - and that is a factor the OP needs to take into account - because the difficulty and costs of amending a bad/non-compliant conversion can be more than doing a conversion on a 'virgin' loft.  For a start there will be a whole load of stuff to be removed and skipped just to gain access to the structure to make any necessary alterations.

A bodged house improvement isn't necessarily a 'bonus'.

Slinky

Did the builder take any photos of the work he had done to improve the loft before he covered it all up? If you can see photos with extra noggins and insulation, that would give you some more idea that there's more work been done than slapping down some loft floor boards and putting up plasterboard.

macman

The most critical part of any conversion is putting in the RSJ's, and no surveyor can determine that, after the event, unless he has a x ray scanner.
A bit of missing insulation or a missing fire door can be remedied, or just ignored, but if the floor is potentially going to collapse under load, then it's a big no-no.
OP needs to have a firm conversation with the vendor if he wants to consider proceeding.

fewcloudy

I'd also be thinking of how easy it would be to sell this on, if that is a possibility in the future?
Already seems limited to cash buyers, in itself not a disaster, but maybe only to cash buyers who do not care about this issue?

However, selling on will be no problem if the price is right, i.e much lower than similar properties that do have the correct building regulations in place.

doodling

Hi,

It is not a house "limited to cash buyers", it is a house with some work that hasn't been shown to meet building regulations.

There is likely to be no problem getting a mortgage on the property (although the mortgage company might want some form of insurance / indemnity).

It won't affect your insurance, except that if ithe loft collapses due to poor workmanship you possibly won't be covered.

Unless you tell your council's building control team about it, there is an extremely low risk that any enforcement action will be taken.

The house is what it is and I doubt that you will get any more paperwork than you already have - you need to decide whether it is the house for you based on what you already know.

Heres_the_deal

Just to add, in case its not been mentioned. Some properties require deeper or modified foundations for 'some' loft conversions.

We came across this issue in two houses we wanted to convert the loft. In one potential property, the foundations were a metre deep on limestone, building control wanted them underpinned to 1.5 meters. In another it was a typical Victorian corbelled foundation that required the additional of a trench foundation.