Council Rip Off - Alterations to Ex-Council House

CS100

bbbunny - if you want to make further checks, the document to look at is the original transfer between the council and the Right to Buy purchasers. (Ours is entitled Transfer Pursuant to Rule 72.) I hope you find that you don't have the dreaded clause, although it sounds as though you might be alright from what the council said to you.

harryhound

Are you people absolutely sure you are not subject to an "estate" covenant.
Part "C" of you Land Registry certificate may say
"the original conveyance...............subject to restrictive covenants between ............filed in title xx9999999"
As RESTRICTIVE covenants can last for ever; you have to pay another 3 GBP (at least) to get a copy of xx999999 to find out what they are.
In the case of my relative, her solicitor did NOT mention this pitfall until she asked "Why is a well built, completely modernised, 1950's semi 25% cheaper than a nearby 2 up 2 down Victorian metal worker's terrace opening out directly onto the street - Is it just snobbery?"
This covenant was one of the reasons (in addition to snobbery).

ormus

i would just do the work and cobblers to the council.
id wait and see what penalty they would impose IF i was found out.

re covenants. they can only be enforced by the original owner. so any covenants going back decades are virtually unenforcible.
my house has convenants going back to 1935 from the Lord Ellesmere estate.
ive built a triple extension, and Lord Ellesmere is nowhere to be seen.

odowdchr

CS100 wrote: »

We own an ex-council house and need the council's permission to carry out alterations that affect the appearance of the house/fence etc. Apparently all Right to Buy transfers contain a restrictive covenant that is binding on subsequent owners (like us). West Berkshire Council are seeking a payment of £1000 plus £500 fees to permit us to carry out a basic loft conversion that we desperately need. With a loan we are hoping to scrape together enough money for the conversion, and really don't want to have to get an even bigger loan to pay the council a completely disproportionate fee and premium (in addition to the costs of any planning permission and building regulations approval). I see that Harlow Council charge 1% of the cost of works, which is obviously much less, so presumably the council just pick a figure from the air. I would have thought that if banks have to charge fair prices now, councils should too. I would be hugely grateful for any suggestions for avoiding or limiting the costs. Many thanks

It seems strange that you, as a "subsequent owner" are still restricted to a covenant.
The original "right to buyers" have been allowed to sell the house on to you, so assumedly the initial 3 years are up?
My mate had a similar problem. Like a lot of people, he got his council property at 40% below market value, then wanted to immediately extend it. He had to wait.
I can see the point in the council not wanting former tenants to take advantage of a great deal and just use it to make money when private owners have had to pay full whack...but he had 3 kids and needed the space to improve his life.

harryhound

I think there should be a system where the Land Registry writes to the last known address of the owner of the covenant every (say) 12 years demanding (say) 100 GBP to "renew" the restrictive covenant. If there is no reply , then the covenant should be deleted.
There is some sense to "estate" covenants that prevent (say) houses being turned into flats to the detriment of the other people living on the estate.
It is possible to insure against the likes of Lord Ellesmere coming creeping out of the woodwork, and if he fails to do so for (say) 12 years he has probably missed his opportunity as far as most courts are concerned. However this should be compared with the general rule that if a domestic householder can get away with ignoring the planning system for 4 years, then the local authority cannot enforce it.

When we sold my late mother's house , it came complete with a restrictive covenant that said "no alterations without permission of the original land owner, this permission would not be unreasonably withheld. A set of drawings plus a fee of 12 guineas must be sent to xxxxxxxxx (a long defunct firm of surveyors)". As the purchaser wanted to knock it down and rebuild something better, I had quite a job, visiting neighbours and confirming that nobody had bothered to trace the original owner, especially as his "manor house" had since been demolished and replaced by an estate of a dozen houses.
The deeds also showed a "Building Line" that in theory stopped any house being built or extended nearer to the highway.
This old rubbish can make a real difference when you come to sell, especially now that conveyancers have to be extra careful about being held responsible. The seller gets reams of irrelevant questions to answer along the lines of "where is the toxic waste buried in the garden".

Harry.

PS

ormus, I think you will find that a restrictive covenant has to "benefit" some sort of nearby land, not Lord Muck himself, dead or alive. It can be written to benefit not just Lord Muck's land but the land of all your neighbours. In this latter case it is known as an "estate" covenant. I am aware of a really posh example, I will see if I can find a link to it for you and post it here. It is not just people living on ex council estates that find their reasonable plans held to ransom.
Found it:
http://www.esherplace.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=1
(You may have bought your home for £ 1,000,000 but you don't mess with your neighbours here!
No "gated fortresses" - and quite right too).

Steel_2

The restrictive covenant does not relate to the owner of the ex-council house. It relates to the house and land, so it doesn't matter how many people buy it, the basic covenants still stands.

I would not go ahead and do any alterations without sorting this out - if you ever come to sell, the propective owners will want to see planning permission and building regs. Without them, it will hold up the sale until you obtain them or God forbid the council won't grant them and despite lengthy appeals you are forced to tear down or alter your changes. We put the sale process on hold buying this place as the owners had changed an attached outhouse to a functional room (which included changing a flat roof to a pitched one) and didn't bother getting building regs. We wouldn't go ahead without it and as it turns out the alterations weren't legal at all and had to be altered to make them so - at their expense.

I don't know if this is of any use, but I hunted out a copy of my deeds and my solicitor said the following two paragraphs form the basis of the restrictive covenants:

Schedule 3, point 3 .....no shed, outhouse or any other structure of any kind whether temporary or permanent shall be erected on the property or any part therof nor shall any caravan or house on wheels or chattels adapted or intended for use as a dwelling or sleeping place be placed or allowed to stand upon the property without the necessary planning permission and /or approval under the Building Regulations being first sought and obtained.
Schedule3, point 7. not to make any external alterations or additions to the property without the written consent of the council which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld.

My solicitors advice when it comes to these covenants is to write directly to the legal department and ask them to remove it. Say nothing about plans, costs or penalties at this point as the deeds say nothing about a charge. If there is a covenant in place, asking them to remove it will automatically alert them to the possibility of future development and they will/should point out that the covenant exists. A letter will come back with the information about gaining a deed of release and probably charges which she says are negotiable. If there isn't one then they will issue a deed of release.

However, after speaking to a developer friend, he says that these paragraphs are not a covenant. Schedule 3, point 3 is a standard covenant imposed on all properties to ensure that any development of the land has to go through the standard planning procedure, so he doesn't think the covenant would be in this form, it would be more specific. Point 7 is designed to give them control over how the street scene evolves, i.e you couldn't suddenly decide to re-create the taj mahal as your fascade as it would not be in keeping with it's surroundings.

My deeds contain three schedules, but there is a fourth mentioned relating to conditions made between the council and the farmer who owned the land in 1948 and 1950 (the farmer's descendents still live and run the farm). This schedule is not laid out in detail, only mentioned so it may be that the covenant my developer friend refers to is here.

Tread very carefully until you have every confirmed everything and have all the loose ends tied up. Otherwise you could lose a small fortune of your hard earned money. The council won't lose anything - even on court cases, they have a very deep pot of our money to spend!

Steel_2

Just spoken to the land registry and they do not have the deed information relating to Schedule 4 between the council and the original landowner. They beleive they did see it, when the house was originally bought by the previous owners in 1995, but sent it back to the solicitor dealing with the sale at that time.

They suggested getting onto the council and requesting information relating the fourth schedule, as it is not present in the deed I signed. If it does send schedule 4 across and the charge is referred to there's a choice to be made.

As far as we can see, if the charge is negligable compared to the money we will be spending (ie a fixed fee of say £1K if you're looking at build costs of £60K plus), pay the thing and have done with it. It's not worth the agro. If it's £20K compared to costs of £60K we really have to fight to reduce it to a realistic amount or get it made void (possibly on the basis that retaining the right to profit from any future development is against the Land Act under which the house and land was sold by the council plus the fact we paid full market value and recieved no discount?). I'm fairly confident it's an atiquated system that can be challenged and won in court.



Anyway, I'll keep you all updated as we go along this, as it might come in useful for anyone else looking at paying charges for Restrictive Covenants.

CS100

I take it you're still pursuing the development of part of your garden? I will certainly be interested to hear how you get on.

Our transfer document stated clearly the obligations (I thought we had read everything when we bought the house, but obviously not). We have something similar to your Schedule 3, point 7, but ours doesn't state that the council's consent is not to be unreasonably witheld - but from all our investigations it seems that they are not entitled to behave unreasonably anyway.

We're about to write to the Council putting forward all these various arguments so I will report back in due course too.

harryhound

Hi Steel,
Good posting.
Out of interest, how long had the outhouse had its nice new pitched roof (and probably dodgy internal improvements; eg not up to modern footing depths? poor thermal insulation? etc.).
What did the Council force the seller to do?
Did you contemplate having a quiet word with the seller to explain that as you were buying an illegal structure, you would have to reduce the price by x (where x was less than y, the total costs of legalising the situation) in exchange for turning the blind eye?

With the modern tough requirements of the current building regulations, there must be thousands of properties out there fitted with dodgy windows, conservatories leading out directly from a living room etc. etc. without beginning to think about the whims of a local council.

Harry..

bookduck

Is this because the property is leasehold, as surely they can'y do this on freehold properties?