Afternoon All!
DH and I are house-hunting and found a house we both like, but the vendors have made an internal change that I'm not convinced shouldn't have had some sort of permission or other.
House was built in 1985, and has a brick porch sticking out the front which is original. At some point (no idea when - online estate agent can't/won't find out for us and house has been owned from new by the same people) the vendor has removed what must have been the internal porch wall - so that when you open the outside porch door, you're now straight into the main hall. There is a slight dip in the floor which shows where this wall must have been, as well as small sticking out 'stud walls' (maybe 2 inches wide) at each side.
When I've asked the estate agent they insist that 'no wall was removed, just a door'. Now, this space in what would otherwise be the external wall of the house, is at least 7 feet wide - much too wide for even double doors. So I can only assume it must have been one of those glass-wall-with-door combos, or part wall and part door, or perhaps even a UPVC wall/door combo. (This is the only house of its style in the street so we can't snoop at one of the other houses in the street, unfortunately!)
Estate agent insists that 'as no wall was removed, no planning permission was required and no building regs applied'. This just doesn't 'feel' right to me. Apart from anything else, the house is now open to an external porch which would not have been insulated - and again, estate agent - when asked about whether the porch area was insulated - just repeats 'no wall was removed therefore insulation was not a factor'.
Estate agent has stated (though of course we would want it checked) that there is a steel bar/girder in the ceiling to support where this door/wall originally was. If we bought the house i would actually just want to replace the wall - I wouldn't want my muddy small kids and dog barrelling through the front door and straight into the carpeted hallway and house! But I don't want to get partway through a purchase and then solicitors start pointing out that unauthorised changed were made to the property which drags matters out for months and leads to additional costs...
Anyone know anything about such matters?
Thanks in advance!