How to verify legitimacy of pdf sent through conveyancer

[Orchid1980]

Hello

I have bought a house and it seems that the building regs certificate we got off the vendors might have not been ever issued by the council.

Through the conveyancing process, it took a number of weeks of us insisting on having sight of a completion certificate before we received it. When we did receive it through our solicitor, we took it in good faith that it was a genuine copy of the original.

We have had to liaise with the council on a separate issue and it's come to light that according to the LA, they never issued a completion certificate for the property. Since buying the house, we have discovered that the vendors misrepresented the property in other ways (won't go into detail here). Their credibility is now suspect to us.

The vendor was also a designer by profession. So perhaps not too difficult to photoshop a completion certificate and turn it into a pdf?

My question is: since the council insist they never issued the document we got through the conveyancing process, what can we do to try to find out about the legitimacy of the pdf version we received? We were told that no original documents were needed.

Hello
You would normally be fine relying on a PDF version. If they have forged the PDF this is fraud and you should consider bringing a claim against them for any losses they suffered.

I would suggest asking your solicitor to ask their solicitor if he ever saw an original, and if not to ask his client to produce an original. You could explain that the council have said that a certificate was never issued and you are trying to clear it up with them.