Issue with house purchase

[kittlesticks]

Hi all
Found this topic really helpful when dealing with issues with our buyer, now thankfully sorted, just got an issue now with our house purchase.
House we are buying is a big 3 bed, master bedroom has a fairly large en-suite. Searches etc have revealed that the en suite was added by the current owners, around 8 years ago. However no building compliance certificate exists for it.
We've had detailed surveys for the structure etc which have raised no issues at all.
We intend on being in house 'forever'. En-suite is not up to date and within a few years we will replace it. But this house is definitely 'it' for us.
Can we move in and get building regs sorted when we do up the en suite?
I did ask advice from the council who said that they would usually inspect and make recommendations if needed, but they don't issue a time limit on getting the recommendations done. I read online that you don't need planning permission to add an en suite but it needs to be over a certain size (it's pretty large), so it meets that one.
We could push the sellers on this but we are under huge pressure ourselves from our buyer.
Thanks to anyone who has thoughts.

I wouldn’t let this worry me, personally. Just ask the sellers to get an indemnity policy.

As pp said make sure there's an indemnity policy, there's one of these for virtually everything.

You are asking for trouble with indemnity policies.
Basicall you are taking out a policy that means you can never contact the council or anyone else to tell them, builders or anyone else the building has not been signed off. So any changes, any further work you want to do on it has to be on the quiet and you will have a lot of trouble selling it.
You are only covered if the building regs accidentally discovers the lack of planning/regs and tells you to pull it down or amend it.
It is a massive can of worms and you need to get it signed off before you buy the house or you will regret it.
Indemity policies are not worth the paper they are written on as I have found out several times to my cost.
Most solicitors will advice against you accepting an indemnity policy.
The last house I sold it turned out there was no planning for the extension, none of my buyers would accept an indemnity policy (quite rightly) and I had to get restrospective planning which meant I was paying mortgage and rent for a whole year before I could sell the place, I had to move as I had taken a job across country.
If you move in and ask the council to give you retrospective planning permission, your indemnity policy is immediately invalidated and if the council then says actually no you can't have it and the building has to come down for whatever reason which can happen for the most trivial of reasons you could be many thousands out of pocket.
Don't touch this one until planning is sorted even if it means losing your buyers. It isn't worth it.

You can’t get an indemnity policy now that you have sought advice from the Council. You need to speak to your Solicitor.

You need to go through a regularisation process with building control but that will invalidate any indemnity.

Hi, so you don't need planning permission to add an en suite. Agree about an indemnity, but obviously made sure I didn't give the council the address. They tend to be very helpful for hypothetical questions luckily.
I suppose my question is more, if we just do the en suite again ourselves (rip out and replace) can we get the council involved then and get all the certificates sorted at that point.
Rather than have someone come over and tell us about any issues with the en-suite now... given they explained that there would be no time limit for the work being done?
It's quite confusing. Both our parents on both sides of the family have added en suites to their homes without regulation compliance certificates, within the last ten years, and said it wouldn't have even occurred to them and they would have no idea about it.
We want to live in the house for circa the next 20 years. We don't want to rent it out or sell it on.

Building regulations and the requirement to have them is a bit of an odd one

Not having it in place for an en-suite wouldn't bother me?

Few people realise that technically you need building regulations if you re plaster more than a certain % of their walls......but NO ONE bothers?? It's just free money to the council

That's an interesting point! I didn't realise that. With our current house we knocked down a supporting wall and added a beam, we got a certificate for that, but at the time it was pretty clear to me that it was obviously altering the structure of the house and needed to be signed off.
I wouldn't even think about it for stuff like adding a bathroom to the corner of a bed room. The council did say the most common issues they find are electrical, drainage and ventilation, so that's what they would check. The survey raised zero problems with any of that tho. And we had to have a further survey for complex reasons so now we have two detailed surveys neither of them suggest we may need to remove the en suite. My head is a mess on it! In the time between buying the house and eventually selling it, we might have even re fitted the en suite ... twice!