retrospective building regs

s77

Hi all,

I am feeling pretty desperate now.
If I can explain the situation. We have a property with a large single story extension at the rear, which has been up for over 10 years. We foolishly applied to get retrospective building regs on it as we were deliberating on selling the property and buying another to accomodate plans for a growing family.

We had a building regs offical out who stated the work was good but needed some more doing to bring it up to spec. He wrote down what the requirments were (which we still have a copy of) and we duly followed the recommedations and he came out half way through, said it was fine and then again at the end and told us he would sign the work off and we had nothing to worry about.

On the basis of this, we took a bridging loan out and re-mortaged the house in order to purchase the other property, with the intention of selling this one when we were able to move into the new property.

Since then, this building regs inspector has disappeared and "will not be returning for the forseeable future" and another inspector has come in, told us that they will be taking enforcement action and that the building in no way complies with building regs.

We have appointed a chartered suryeyor who intends to meet with the second inspector to clarify what needs to be done to bring the extension up to regs and has advised us that we should not challenge the local council about the differences between the two building inspectors opinions (and our considerable expense at doing the work that the first inspector told us was required and which we have his handwritten evidence of), as this may result in a delay which would hold up any sale of the house.

If we cannot sell the house at a value which would reflect the extension, we are in BIG trouble. We would have problems obtaining indemnity insurance now as the council know about the extension.

Any thoughts, advice, ideas are greatly greatly greatly appreciated.


Many thanks for taking the time

TroysMum

Ok, firstly, do you have the letter of the outlined works requiring attention and the recommendations from your first building inspector?

TroysMum

was it on official local authority headed paper?

s77

Many thanks for your quick replies!
No, we did not have a single thing from the local authority with regard to written info, apart from the handwritten notes by the first inspector, which are on plain paper.
We are still waiting to have any kind of report from either inspector but the suryeyor we have employed met with a senior building regs offical who has told him that " they may wish to take enforcement action against you, particularly if it cannot be demonstrated that the main areas of concern in respect of non compliance are being addressed"



Thanks

silvercar

If they are considering enforcement action there must be something seriously wrong with the structure. I think people on here would be able to give more advice if you could say more specifically what the problem is.

s77

Hi Silvercar,

The extention was originally a conservatory. It is now being used as a kitchen.
The first inspector asked us to add extra insulation to the walls and roof and dry line the walls, which we did. He said we could leave the stack pillers exposed as a feature, which we did. The next inspector said some strange things such as there were too many windows, we could not leave the pillers exposed and then went on to say that a new roof would be needed as ventilation is required within it. This was a replacement roof provided by the insurance company when the original perspex roof blew off in the storms 3 years ago (prior to the room being used as a kitchen).

We are beginning to think it may be easier and less costly to change the room back to a conservatory by replacing the roof. This may avoid the problem with building regs although reduce the value of the house?

Pookle

I think you need to get proper advice from an Architect or Surveyor.

Also, worth noting, you don't have to go through Local Authority to get Building Regulations approval, you can use an independant advisor. In many cases these are a lot less hassle.

s77

Hi Pookle. Many hanks for your input

We are taking advice from a Surveyor who is being as helpful as he can. Its obviously just a real stress as we are trying to do the right thing and follow a employee of the council's advice, at cost to us and then told by a second employee that that advice was incorrect and he should not have written anything down or advised us what to do.
The suveyor has told us that we cannot use an independant adviser/approved inspector as it is for retrospective building regs

Pookle

Ah okay, we didn't think that was the case (we work at an Architects firm). Well it's worth noting that it only has to comply with the Building Regs of 10 years ago, not as they stand now.

Also you can take an indemnity policy out to cover you when you sell your house if you don't have regs approval. Normally costs about £100 or so, but it could be too late for you now the Council is involved.

TroysMum

I would say it would be easier to convert it back to a conservatory and make it exempt from building regs, (there is a criteria that needs to be adheared to i.e less than 30m2, must be a permanent external door between the conservatory and the dwelling etc etc). It is actually quite difficult to get conservatories to comply with building regs as conservatories dont generally have the required foundations required to comply with building regs and the heat loss etc from there would also be a problem, amoung other issues which i'm sure your aware of.
You wouldnt be able to go to an approved inspector with a retrospective application it would have to go through local authority.
It seems you are having a nightmare!!

Doozergirl

Pookle wrote: »

Well it's worth noting that it only has to comply with the Building Regs of 10 years ago, not as they stand now.

I'm very much of the understanding that it either complies with modern regs or it doesn't. If you want building control sign off for work, it has to comply with modern regs unless it is a listed building in which case you can often get away with like for like. It doesn't make sense for a Building Control Officer to sign something off as acceptable 'then' when it isn't acceptable 'now'. It would just be a massive can of worms and too much of a possibilty of people worming out of their responsibilties by claiming work was older than it is.

OP, I feel for you but you are either in a very unfortunate situation where a simple indemnity policy may have sufficed, or one where the conversion of what sounds like a bog standard conservatory into a kitchen was never going to be enough to pass the eye of a mortgage valuer and therefore never increased the value in the first place.

The toss up is between the cost of making the structure meeting current regs compared to the perceived loss of value. You need to sit down with the building control officer; him with a proper list of points to be rectified and your surveyor with a good enough head of building regs to be able to argue it through and compromise.

Believe me, I know how stringent some officers can be and there's nothing you can do about it. What we did was hire the worst one on a consultancy basis when he retired, so if we are ever unsure, we know if we pass his standards, we're going to pass anyone's