Shall I throttle my solicitors!

[puffylovett]

So, last week we were asked by our buyers solicitor to put an indemnity policy in place for a tiny bay window kitchen extension with no building regs, so we rang them to find out how we do this & they said they would get a quote. Chasing it up today, they said they consider it not applicable as a) no extension was done !!!!! (I soon put them right on that score) and b) they'd not been asked for it again so were at this stage considering it not applicable.

Next, I chased up the building regs and pp for the 1994 extension on the property we're buying. After shuffling paperwork, he told me they'd had a building notice on the 19th April. OK so wheres our copy then ! i don't trust that that's not the notice for a second extension that was done, as we've not seen a copy. Apparenlty they're waiting for the planning permission to come through so they'll chase it up.

Oh but they were planning to exhange tomorrrow. Where you planning to tell us this !!!!!!!!!!!

Riiiight, with lots of outstanding queries???? Bloody callcentre solicitors. Is it me? Am I thick to think I should get a straight answer BEFORE we commit to exchanging contracts????? Arrrrrghhhh !!!

Excuse me whilst I stress about moving house !

how long ago was the kitchen window extension done? if you can prove more than 5 years you should be fine

Oh blimey about 10 plus years I should think, it was done before we bought the house.

Am v concerned about the lack of planning permission / building regs on a 1994 2 storey extension on our new place though. Could there be ramifications on that for lack of paperwork ? I can't get a straight answer from my solicitor. Can we exchange without that and could it cause problems for us? Worried now....

In both cases I believe that the works, by virtue of the passage of time, should be beyond the reach of the local authority provided you can prove when these works were done.