Selling house - need information from previous solicitor from purchase

[TheChineseChicken]

The thread title probably makes no sense and I'm sure the answer to this is tough luck! However...

We are selling our house and our buyer's solicitor has requested we purchase indemnity for a small single storey extension at the back that we think has been there since the 60s. There is no record of planning permission or permitted development. Fine, it's not a big deal but we would obviously rather not spend the money.

I have been going through all the paperwork from when we bought the house as obviously this wasn't raised then. Nothing from our solicitor at the time discusses this or raises it as an issue.

As I said at the beginning of my post I guess it's just tough but do you think we would get anywhere asking our previous solicitors? Could we ask them why they didn't notice the missing planning permission? It was 5 years ago that we bought the house.

Jon66 because of responses like Pepperpop's. My solicitor has a vested interest in arranging it for us as they will profit from the admin fee.

OP if you don't trust your solicitor then maybe you need a different solicitor! (Admittedly that is probably impractical at this stage...)
Can you not just query the charge?

I think this has snowballed a bit! I do trust our solicitor, just wanted to check a couple of things. Thanks for all the helpful advice

Your solicitor has insurance so if something goes wrong with the policy or you are sold the wrong policy you will be covered by the insurance regs for solicitors so have an additional protection. Not the case if you purchase it yourself.

I bet OP is using a Licensed Conveyancers, hence the added on fees.
DO NOT contact the council about it. It will invalidate the insurance.

What's a licensed conveyancer? We are using the conveyancing department of a national law firm