Kindly advice with buying house with no building regulations for wet room (and I need to renovate it)

[annaphan]

Hi all,
I am a first time buyer so I have a lot of concerns that I don't know who to ask. Hope I can find the answers here.

My DH and me are in the process of buying a bungalow. This house was changed quite a bit even before the current seller bought it. The loft was extended with a dormer in 1982, we have received building regulations and structural approval for this loft but there is no completion certificate (in the past I think they didn't need this).

However, there is a wet room that was built a long time ago. The seller claimed that it was built by the time when no building regulations were applied for this wet room, but she agreed to buy an indemnity insurance for the wet room. But I am thinking that this wet room definitely need to renovate, I'm just not sure at the moment to just make it nicer, or reduce the space (for a wet room, it's freaking big and it took quite a lot of space from the dining room, so there is potential that we will need to move the wall in between to make the wet room smaller and dining room bigger)

And it puts me a lot of thought for what will happen if I want to change that wet room? I assume I need to get a building regulation for it (if I want to move the wall. If I just want to renovate it to make it look nicer, do I need to inform building control?) and if the people from the building control come to have a look and said no, i can't build a wet room here and ask me to remove it, I can claim the indemnity insurance?

Next thing is the existing loft. I hope it can be extended as right now it's quite small (one bedroom, one bathroom). But having no completion certificate, would it affect my plan of extending the loft? And do I need any building regs and approval for extending?

Thanks and hope to get some advice :)

My understanding is that building regs are separate from planning permission. Regs are just to ensure that the work was done to an appropriate standard, so they won't tell you that you can't have a wet room, just that they won't sign off on it unless it satisfies their standards.

If the work pre dates the requirement to meet specific regs no enforcement notice would be issued now. Straight forward redecoration is unlikely to require a building notice, even changing a controlled fitting (like for like) does not require notification of bc. The general principal is that any instalation should be no less conformance. However if you are significantly changing an instalation that is currently non conformant it would need to meet current regs. Overall I don't think you will have significant issues from your description. Obviously read your survey results carefully looking for any issues that may be being caused by the loft extension or wet room. The ability to extend the loft will depend upon the construction of the roof and planning guidance requirements (as mentioned by others this is seperate to bc).

Loft:
You may need PP for extending the loft.
You certainly will need building regs sign off when you extend the loft.
You will have to bring the whole loft up to current building regs if you extend it.

Wetroom:
Nothing at all required if you renovate unless you're getting electrics done.
If you move the wall you'll want building regs sign off.

The big problem with the loft may be lack of a suitable staircase and whether it meets fire regs. I would get an architect to advise on this. If the loft wasn't signed off, does it conform to current regulations? Moving the wall depends on whether it is load bearing or not. If not I think it does not matter what you do. It is a partition in effect.

Thanks so much for all your replies.
My biggest concern is the loft since we have idea to extend it to make a third bedroom. I don't think a loft built in 1982 would meet current regulations. If the BC don't sign off for the loft, is there anyway I still can go ahead and extend it without their approval? But this would affect me in the future when I want to resell the house :(

Phone BC about extending the loft, they are quite helpful. The three likely issues would be: fire regs (such as upstairs light fittings, fire rated/double tacked ceilings, doors and escape routes), access stairs (width inclination etc) and thermal insulation. If the current stairs are non conformant and can't be practicably be changed they may accept them, the fire regs and insulation are probably less negotiable but then if you are extending and redecorating then it's not likely to be too much extra work (remove existing plasterboard from walls and ceiling install prescribed insulation, over tack upstairs landing ceiling and change lights to fire rated types etc). To be honest you do you want to live in a house that is not as efficient/safe as practicable? The bigger risks to being able to extend into the roof is planning permission and the suitability of the existing structure, a planning officer and a structural engineer could help with these enquiries.