Retrospective consent for conservatory

[Pinklady89]

Hi, just wondered people's opinions as we are at risk of losing our onward property today because our buyers solicitors are being pedantic about the developers consent for our conservatory and won't exchange untill resolved. Basically we had a conservatory built back in 2013 which we obtained consent from the original developer and provided this letter to our solicitor with all our other paperwork but has been lost somehow. We have since gained retrospective consent and proved we paid for the original consent at the time but our buyers solicitor is getting quite shirty and only want original consent or confirmation it existed, this would be ok but the developer has lost all the original paperwork we sent them too! We have also offered some sort of underwriting but this has been rejected too. Have gone back to developer with letters from neighbours, drawings and planning permission but getting desperate and they were slow enough the first time. Anyone got any suggestions? Just want to exchange and secure our purchase

If planning permission was sought at the time then your local council should have details on their website. Put in your address on their application search facility and hopefully you will find the decision notice. That should satisfy the solicitor.

I don't think it's the planning permission that's the issue, it's the consent from the developer.

We have retrospective consent from the developer though so surely this should be acceptable

When you say underwriting, I assume you mean that your solicitor has offered indemnity insurance for breach of covenant consent? That should be sufficient in the case of lost papers and/or lack of consent (I appreciate you did have consent originally).

If I was your solicitor I would be calling the other solicitor to get to the bottom of the problem I.e. Why won't they simply accept the insurance? This is the accepted way of dealing with this sort of problem. Are you sure there's nothing else that's causing the delay, as far as you know?

I agree with pp, sounds like they are stalling. Retrospective consent should be more than enough. I think there is something else behind this.

I also came on to say offer to pay their indemnity instance to cover potential breach and future problems.