Any surveyors around or people who can chat about subsidence?

[KeepWashingThoseHands]

Background:

Lived in the house 5 years, all sound on the surveyors reports on purchase. House is circa 1950's and a ground floor extension was put on a couple of years before we bought it (front and back).

In the last year I'd say the seams on some of the ceiling plater boards have become more noticeable. However in the last few months, and especially the last month, I've seen lots of surface level cracks appear on the plasterboard, not just at the seams, and it's in more than one room. Not contained to one side or area of the house. Don't know if you can see the pic attached.

No cracks I can see in the external walls.

What do I do! It's really worrying me. Call a surveyor for another inspection to see if it is subsidence as opposed to just settling or the plasterboard finish wasn't great.

Thanks!

Not a surveyor but work in property.

I’m pretty sure with subsidence you would see the cracking go up the external walls almost like steps (so it follows the mortar between the bricks). The cracks would also start to open up which these don’t look like they are.

To me it just looks like surface cracks to the plaster which is one of those things. I had my bedroom walls plastered less than 2 years ago and have cracking already because I live on a busy road, the house can vibrate with the traffic passing. Do you know when the plastering was last done?

Keep an eye on it but I don’t think you need to stress about your house falling down anytime soon.

I'm not a surveyor, but I am a structural engineer. I don't think you need to worry about subsidence. Those fine surface cracks are likely down to vibration and minor deflections. We get the same sorts of things in our rented flat - around door frames, etc. It's just because minor movement causes the brittle plaster to crack along stress lines. It's not a structural issue, just a cosmetic issue. When designing a structure there are two sets of checks - Ultimate Limit State design and Serviceability Limit State design. In laymans terms, ULS is a structural soundness check, and SLS is based on ensuring deflections etc are within a suitable range for comfortable use. For example, you might get perfectly safe levels of deflections which wouldn't damage the structure but would impact it's practical use, so the practical use is the limit for them so that the building is usable. Sorry I'm not describing this well, but you're just experiencing the impact of normal structural vibration and deflection, it's nothing to worry about.
Things to look out for in structural instability are deep cracks along brickwork lines, etc.