Builders finished but haven't given us 'private' building control certificate

[Itshouldntmatter]

I am up at 3am worrying about the lack of building control certificate for our loft conversion. We had our loft converted last year. Two bedrooms, shower room. From a company that was recommended to us by a neighbour. All finished (EVENTUALLY) in October (should have been July).

We had quite a few problems with the builder in the beginning, one of which was that they used their own private building control (which in hinesight I would tell people NEVER to do), and they hadn't registered them with the council. They did do it eventually, and apparently they came and inspected once. I was worried about the private building control (e.g. one employed by the builder), but the guy was a bit of a bully and he managed to reassure me it was okay.

The job was really slow to finish, and we had some concerns about how it was all being done, and some difficulty dealing with the owner. It was REALLY slow. They didn't finish the snagging list, but partly because they took so incredibly long, I just lost the will to fight them anymore.

However, I have been calling over the last six months about building control and my calls haven't been returned. They aren't answered and I hear nothing from them. I have gotten up in a panic to have a look and have found some really negative reports on them on another forum (which essentially totally echo my experience with them - they could have been written by me except that these other people posting were saying that they had massive problems and leaks and essentially the work was totally substandard but the DID have their building control certificate).

I am now in a total panic. I want to have a building control certificate, because obviously we need one. I do have the name of the company who (in theory) did our building control, and have emailed them. But what if I can't get it from them? Is it possible to get a building control certificate retrospectively? Should I get someone to come and check to make sure my house is safe? I'm really upset and don't know what to do. Please can someone advise?

We had a great experience with a private building control but didn't get the certificate as we had forgotten to send them our electric certificate. In your case the fact they are ignoring you is the issue. Send them an email, followed by a telephone saying you want it by Monday or will be forced to take further action and see what happens.

I agree with superram that you should chase by emailing and calling the building control co - good to have a paper trail imho.

We also used a private building control co - in our case recommended by our architect - when we extended/altered our last house in 2012, and tbh we had no issues as such, although I do believe they are far less picky (and therefore possibly less thorough?) than council building control would be....in fact now I think of it we had to chase ours for the final cert.

Our cert came through ok in the end and we sold in 2014 with no issues - but again there were things (relatively minor such as no extractors in utility/bathrooms) that the independent co didn't pick up on, but these didn't cause problems with our sale - it was as if having the completion cert (which was also far more vague than I'd anticipated) was all that mattered to our buyer/their sol & lender!