Help with loft regularisation?

[Lilpanda]

Hello lovelies,

My boyfriend and I finally bought our first home. It has two loft rooms (were used as bedrooms unofficially) built 16 years ago however there was no paperwork for them. So we got the house at a reduced price.

Now we are interested in trying to bring it up to standard so they can officially be bedrooms in the future. Hoping some of you more experienced can help with what we should do next?

We emailed the council who sent a long and confusing message about regularisation.

What I understand from it is we need to pay £700 to essentially start the application and get a building control surveyors to just come out and tell us what needs to be done? Is this right?

Another issue is on the application form it asks for the details of the builder... but this is not possible to get because it was done 16 years ago and the owner has since died so I don’t think the past owners knew who did the work (they inherited the house and had no clue about anything to be honest).

Any insights? Thoughts?

Should we start the application then work on it step by step? Or is this just a waste of money?

Thanks

Also... at the moment my main concern is the structural work which although it has been fine all this time we would need to check the joists etc under the floor. So can I assume taking up part of the floor the check these is a good place to start? And if so who can look at this and tell me if it’s up to par? A builder? Or just the building control person?

Will the increase in sale value of the house be worth it?

You will have to open parts of it up so that the Council can look at structure, check insulation, exit doors etc. You will also need to submit load bearing calculations from a structural engineer - if not sufficient, you may have to have additional beams retrospectively installed.

I would start from the premise that if someone went to the trouble of converting a loft but didn't get building regs, then there are likely to be other areas where corners were cut and it is going to cost you to get it up to scratch.

However, any buyer is either going to want the regularisation certificate or expect a discounted price.

I would advise against this. you will not be able to prove the standards of any of the materials and so the work required for regularisation will be extremely onerous and include removing, replacing and upgrading almost everything except the roof tiles.

worse, if you get an arsey official from buildings control they could require that if you can't afford to bring it up to scratch then you have to return the space to a storage area, removing features that make them seem like habitable bedrooms.

instead of contacting building control, contact professionals to quote you for replacing beams, structural supports and install fire resistant features in walls and doors, plus any structural changes to ensure dimensions for landing, doorways and headroom are correct. I suspect you will find the quoted number will be mind-boggling.

by the way, if you purchased an indemnity policy as part of the house purchase due to the known irregularities, then contacting the building regulations department would invalidate that policy.

I would treat it as a brand new loft conversion and employ a builder or cabinet maker experienced in loft conversions and start from scratch.

At least you have most of the dirty work done.

If it wasn’t done to standard then. It’ll be more expensive to update if probably quicker and cheaper to rip it out and start again. Ours cost in the region of £50k including bathroom and dormer. Won’t be cheap to sort it sorry.

A friend bought a house will a loft room that can't officially be called a bedroom, but they use it as such. They are going to have it ripped out and done properly with new steels , new staircase and full width dormer to make two bedrooms and a shower room. The cost is £55k.

The reason why most loft rooms are not officially signed off are because they dont meet the minimum head height / stair clearance / fire regs. Thats not always easy to put right retrospectively.

I would get a specialist loft company round to give you some advice before you contact the council.

We had the same problem. Spent a lot of money just for them to tell us to rip it down and start again. We just left it and will sell somewhat discounted I guess.