To not help the miserable bastards any more

[ohnonotagainagain]

Long story short: sold house, needed to get retrospective planning permission for garage, council taking long time to decide, new owners want to get a lawyer onto us and are being very rude to us, I want to withdraw application and tell them to do it themselves.

All the details so as not to drip feed ... Sold our house to a very friendly couple who seemed like decent folk. Didn't realise at the time that we should have applied for planning permission for a garage conversion we'd done the year previous (new law brought in in our country, not the UK FWIW). We said they could pull out of the sale if they wanted (this was early days before any money had exchanged hands, surveys been done or mortgages applied for) or otherwise we'd help them apply for retrospective planning permission.

DH has been working on planning permission since then. Each time we submit, the council has a month to consider then come back with a yes/no or a request for further information. Twice they've asked for further information. Second time we took a while to get back to them (4 weeks) as I gave birth on the same day we received the demand, and between a single day paternity leave and a ft job, DH was a bit busy and it slipped his mind. So that bit I can see would be annoying for the new owners.

So additional evidence was eventually submitted and as of today we're coming to the end of another month-long waiting period, and told them at the beginning of last week that we'd know by this Tuesday (11th) if we'd been successful. They, however, took it upon themselves to call the council on Friday and were told that the application had been shelved indefinitely - in fact, looking at the time frames involved, the council must have given them the results of another application we made at our new house, which has been shelved; they don't have the right to ditch this current application at this point.

So, thinking that their application had been refused, they called their notary who in turn called me and said they were going to get a lawyer on us because we've been hiding stuff from them.

We responded with an email with the full paper trail of the application and asked them to please be patient until the office reopened on Tuesday so I could go ask.

They replied telling us that we were immature, unreliable and frankly our personal circumstances (ie having a baby) are of no interest to them, they just want the planning permission granted.

I've a feeling that permission will be granted this time so WIBU to go to the council and withdraw the application, and tell the new owners to do it themselves, as we've no legal obligation to help them and they are being bloody awful? DH thinks we should just see it through so we can get them off our backs.

So no comeback then Squiffany? Thought so

I suspect that we may have had slightly different sized ex garages

And the teeny tiny difference whereby the OP has not lied about PP at any stage, offered to let the buyers pull out and has subsequently been working to get retrospective PP.

@Antigon frankly can't be arsed with someone as rude as yourself. "I despair of you". Really? How very dramatic.
I was trying to point out that that yes, in THE EXACT same situation of no planning permission for a garage conversion, there was a better way of doing things.

Sigh. See above post from @SoupDragon squiffany

"I know that a gentleman's agreement is not legally binding here, we've checked that out"

Then since you are no longer on friendly terms, you need no longer bother
Let them sort the paperwork themselves

(I would NEVER buy anything of value where a gentleman's agreement is important - anything important should be in a legal contract)

Some of the comments on here are really comical. I'm assuming then it was agreed this was a gentleman's agreement and not a verbal agreement and as such not legally binding? And your solicitors will confirm this?

Seriously do what you want, but I strongly suspect they are going to hand you your arse.🤣

Has your solicitor confirmed the agreement isn’t legally binding? If it isn’t I’d just leave them to it if more information is requested. I wouldn’t cancel the request though. They’re sounding off and getting frustrated. They actually did you a favour and took the property off your hands for probably more than it was worth without pp for the garage. So I’d also bear that in mind.

I'd probably go with
As you are aware, the deadline is tomorrow, and we are expecting a favourable response then. If you prefer not to wait, I will gladly withdraw the application and you can undertake the application process yourselves."

Makes the point nicely.

Or do as fizzygreenwater suggests. Depends on how generous you are feeling.

If you didn't't want to do it you shouldn't of offered. Twats trick say you will do something then half arsed effort forgetting to do it (seem you remembered to shelve the application for your new one ) and keep them hanging on for months.

They are likely panicking. Just be polite back and they will likely back off and even apologize. You took a month to respond and now they've been told it's shelved. Of course they are freaking out.

My mind boggles at a) the thought of buying a property without all the paperwork in place and b) using a solicitor whose due diligence was so very poor that they didn’t highlight this during the buying process!

We identified that some vital permissions were missing when buying a house. We told the sellers that we would only proceed once these were in place. It did hold things up a bit but not much and we would never have bought the house without. Too risky.

Twats trick say you will do something then half arsed effort forgetting to do it (seem you remembered to shelve the application for your new one

Ours was shelved precisely because we didn't deal with it. We prioritised their application and let our own lapse.

You dont have to do anything more anyway. Just leave things as they are and move on with your lives like the mature adults you are.

Seek legal advice first but yes I think buyer beware would apply here.

I would do precisely nothing. Tomorrow it sounds very likely that retrospective PP will be granted and problem solved. They haven’t been courteous to you so it’s entirely up to you how long you wish to leave it until you inform them of that. All they needed to do was to email you to ask what was going on. You’ve don’t what you agreed albeit with a small delay.

If they make further contact you can direct them to the council for information.

If anything further occurs up the line they would meet stone cold silence.

I would reply

Dear xxx

Did you mean to be so rude?

Regards
Yyy

Why? Clearly they meant to be rude.

THE LEGALITY IF THE AGREEMENT IS IRRELEVANT!

The only thing the OP agreed to do was ‘help’ applying for retrospective planning permission. That have helped!

Good grief, between people not RTFT, not reading the OP properly, dispensing crackpot made up legal advice and in fighting this thread demonstrates exactly the nature of AIBU and why it is not suitable for serious advice.

THE LEGALITY IF THE AGREEMENT IS IRRELEVANT!

It's totally relevant if they take legal action as they are threatening. In fact it's critical.

What Rachelle11 said.

Although their email may have been pretty rude, the fact that your DH forgot to reply to the council for a whole month wasn't great either. I am guessing that the gentleman's agreement was that your previous house was sold for the value that it would achieve with planning permission in return for you retrospectively obtaining the planning permission?

“It's totally relevant if they take legal action as they are threatening. In fact it's critical.”

Not if they have done what they said they would do; help. They have helped.

And I’m any case the OP has confirmed that their solicitor had said the agreement is not a binding contract.

They bought the house without planning permission, and a gentleman's agreement that we would help them

This is the OP's second post. The buyers were closed,pletely aware about the planning permission and the agreement was to help them.

It's totally relevant if they take legal action as they are threatening.

The legal action is because they wrongly think the retrospective application has been shelved by the council for some reason and they think there is something which the OP is hiding. It has nothing to do with the "agreement" to help with the planning.

Twats trick say you will do something then half arsed effort forgetting to do it (seem you remembered to shelve the application for your new one Is that the purchaser, do you thnk? Or someone else who can't read accurately!

1. OPs own plannng permission lapsed

1. Because they spent their limited time on that of the purchaser

1. Who made the same error you did and responded rudely...

Well I've just been to the planning office and the lady dealing with this application isn't there today, and no-one else in the office can give a definitive answer. The only thing I know for sure is that it has not been shelved or refused, and there are no new requests for more evidence.

Apparently she'll be able to get back to me tomorrow or Thursday. DH is going to email the new owner to tell him this; can imagine that's going to go down well!!

So what? They have been rude, they will continue to be so. All you can do is CHOOSE to find them amusing and to see it through until the planning office get back to you!