Retrospective building regs

[romanremains]

I wonder if anyone can give me some sound advice based on experience.

I am on the verge of exchanging on a property - mid Victorian terrace. like most vic terraces the wall between the 2 reception rooms have been taken down but the vendors do not have a building regs completion certificate - They bought house as is, with the wall already taken down. to get over the issue of missing b.reg cert., the previous owners (prior to my vendors) got an indemnity insurance cert. however, i intend to do renovation work when i move in and the minute i begin to apply for building regs, for my intended work, the indemnity insurance that is currently in place will become null and void. My sols are insisting that we have the building regs cert. and i agree with them. My buyers are ready to exchange on my sale and are understandable getting impatient so i need a quick solution.

What I need to know is how much would it cost to do the required work to make it pass current building regs - in order to get the certificate?

How long would it take?

I have a good relationship with my vendors and i am thinking of suggesting that they start the ball rolling re getting the certificate, we exchange next week but only complete when they have the certificate. I know they will agree to this so long as the process doesn't take months.

who should pay for this? should they? me ? or should we split the cost?

Thanks

I'd be interested in the answer to this. We're in process of buying a house which hasn't got building reg approval, the work was only done a couple of years ago so don't want to go down insurance route as we don't want the risk of it being unsafe. Really hoping it doesn't slow things down!

Are you sure it actually needs BRegs certification.
You only need this if it is a structural wall. This wall isn't always a structural wall and therefore BR isn't required on many of these knock throughs even though it is often assumed that it must be & indemnify themselves anyway.
SO the 1st thing is to identify whether or not it is actually needed. There are various ways to work this out but the only sure fire way is to get a structural engineer to come out and have a look.

If it is a structural wall - the beam needs to be exposed and a structural engineer will need to come and report that they are happy with it or not happy with it and send off the report & calculations to the building inspector, the inspector may then want to also see the exposed beam, you then apply for BR regularisation which will cost a fee. It can be hard to get a structural engineer to report on another persons work and that may be the trickiest bit. Its a bit of a faff of a process but either way the 1st thing would be to speak to a structural engineer.
Hope thats helpful in someway.

It is going to depend on whether the beam and piers have been calculated properly in order to hold up the floor above. Without a surveyor or structural engineer looking at it, I cannot see how anyone on MN can tell you as we can't see it. It may, of course, be perfectly ok. What did your survey say? Presumably that work was required. Also, you will not know if the beam has been installed properly on top of the piers and into the wall.

It is good to know your solicitor is on the ball. The vendors should pay but I have no idea how quickly the council or their contractors will issue the building regs certificate. They are all different due to workload. I think the vendors should have thought of this before because they knew it had no certificate. You may just have to suck it up because even if the beam is the wrong size or installed incorrectly, it is not that much to get it changed if you are renovating anyway.