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No Building Regulation!

5 replies

sugarowl1 · 13/12/2019 13:04

Hi all Im having quite a stressful time at the moment and Im hoping for some advice. We are looking to put our house up for sale in the New Year but I recently found out from my elderly mother (who passed the house to us 5 years ago) that the en suite bathroom has no building regulations. My father who passed away 7 years ago fitted it all himself (about 13 years ago) and never contacted the council about it. It contains a toilet and a sink. This puts us in a very difficult situation as we are going to have to tell the council before putting it on the market and have it checked or potentially removed if its not up to standards. The only reason we are wanting to sell is because we need to downsize to cover the costs of care for my mother. This bathroom is potentially going to cost us thousands and on top of that the fines that may incur from having it illegally all these years. Has anyone ever had a similar problem and had to sort it out with the council? I can't believe this! Thanks for any advice.

OP posts:
TwinMum89 · 13/12/2019 13:20

Please don’t speak to the Council. Take legal advice first from a conveyancer. It may not be an issue given how long ago it was built. Even if it is, you may be able to get indemnity insurance which would cover the lack of building regulation and which would be acceptable to a buyer. Do this before you talk to the Council, otherwise it will be impossible to get indemnity insurance because you will have already disclosed to the Council that there is no building regulation.

johnd2 · 13/12/2019 13:21

Who said you have to tell the council? You don't have to tell anyone anything. The only thing you can't do is say something untrue.

thecalmorchid · 13/12/2019 13:53

From what I recall, this can go in three ways.

You put your house on the market as it is, price it slightly higher. Once you have a buyer, your buyers solicitor should pick up that it doesn't have building regulations.

You can then negotiate a more realistic price, they can go ahead with indemnity insurance and the sale goes through. Or the buyer pulls out.

Please note you cannot do this if you have previously alerted the council to the lack of building regulations.

A second way is you pay out in advance of a sale and bring the bathroom in line with today's building regulations. The difficulty with this is regulations change. As it wasn't ever built with any you may end up with a big bill. But it won't be more than the costs of an en-suite in the first place.

The third option is to get a builder to quietly put the room back as it was before the en suite was fitted. It becomes the room it was originally.

You won't get fined. You didn't know that it was put in without building regulations. We've had this with both buying and selling, It's a formality of paperwork, please don't worry.

LondonMischief · 13/12/2019 14:15

Does the house have building regulations sign off? Bet not, so I wouldnt worry about the ensuite. Just like the house it would be able to meet current regulation.
Just get an indemnity if the buyer solicitor requests. Don’t speak to the council for the reasons given before.

NemophilistRebel · 13/12/2019 18:02

Yes this isn’t something I would be concerned about it all.

List as normal and if anything gets picked up there is indemnity if required but wouldn’t be typical for internal fixtures

They normally only look into extensions and structural alterations

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