Help- Unauthorised property extension

[heydidyouknow]

Hi there
Name change because this is outing and we are still wanting to work "with" this contractor to get this issue rectified...

Ok, so 3 years ago we had an extension carried out to our property. We paid a specialist company to cover all bases including the building regulation sign off etc (did not require planning permission). We paid upfront for the initial stage of building regs and can see online that this was received by our local authority.

To be honest once the works were done (to the tune of £35k) there was a lot going on with our lives so once we had the electrical certs and everything was finished we didn't think anything else of it.

We are now in the process of selling our house and the buyers solicitors have raised that there isn't building reg sign off for completion of works. That's fine we thought, we will go back to the company we paid, they may have the certificate which they've forgotten to give to us.

We approached them and they behaved as if they were doing us the favour in replying! They said that the building control company they had been using (they outsourced this) had gone bust and they hadn't got the certs. Gave some sob story about it costing a load of money on their part because they now have to resubmit through the local authority.

Now, the local authority are wanting to know every detail of the build including opening up walls. It's been a complete nightmare!

Renovation company have remained non apologetic, have said they have provided local authority with all they need to sign off and made a vague comment that if our buyers got pushy they would pay for an indemnity policy! I said no way to that, because our buyers would rightfully then say they would want the house for significantly less!!

We are now dealing directly with the building control team at the local authority and think we are nearly there with the cert. But I am so angered at the time, stress and effort this has taken us during an already stressful time.

What are people's thoughts about raising this with trading standards?? Or even court?

Honestly I dread to think what situation we would be in if we were to have had a fire, I have no doubt that part of the house wouldn't been insured!

You could take it to court but I doubt it would do much good . Others may know better but I think you would still be insured. I would get the certificate and chalk it up to experience.

Did building control do any site visits during the building works?
I’m selling my house and haven’t yet got a completion certificate but I have had all the inspections and I’m just waiting for the electrician to send the electric cert.

If the building inspector didn’t do any inspections they won’t want to sign it off unless they can see it’s up to standard. If the company is known to them for cutting corners they’ll look even harder.

Indemnity insurance is generally the way to go but in those cases it’s best not to talk to building control in the first place.

@Itllbeaninterestingchristmas the building control company that our renovation company did I believe. But now it's with the local authority they are arguing they haven't seen everything they need to.

DH has resorted to opening up walls (which will have to be plastered & repainted) and getting new test certs to meet the standard of the local authority which the renovation company says is different to what they usually work to!!!

It's not the issue with building control so much because since we have been dealing with them directly they have been telling us what needs to be done for sign off. The issue is more around the company we paid to deal with all of this 3 years ago which we had assumed had all been done.

We won't be doing an indemnity insurance as the buyers will undoubtedly want to knock a huge amount off the price of the property to reflect this.

Did you even consider indemnity insurance or discuss it with your solicitor? They will have come across it before and in my experience it doesn't mean dropping the purchase price by a huge amount, the whole purpose of the insurance is to cover any problems so why would you have to drop the price? Too late now that you have approached the local authority though.

If the local authority building control are helping you to get it signed off that’s great as many wont.
Have the buyers said they won’t accept an indemnity insurance? They’re pretty common for many things. I’ve got one for chancel charges and have had them for other thing such as extensions.
You might be able to ask a solicitor who takes on no win no fee cases

I've bought a house requiring an indemnity policy. I did expect the vendor to pay for it. I didn't expect a reduction in price. Same when we sold. We paid for the ongoing indemnity, the buyer paid the asking price.

You can't get indemnity now that building control know about it so that's not an option anyway.

I think making sure you have all the building regs / control certificates is sort of a thing as the owner you should make sure you have as ( in your case & in mine before you think I am being smug) it will affect you more than anyone else. In our case ( when we realised we did not have all sign offs ) we got building regs to inspect & say what needed doing to bring up to regulations before putting the house on the market. Less stressful than just before sale. IIRC we had to do the same with electrical certificates , which change more frequently than Building regs. Went back to builders and they had submitted all the requests but we did not have the sign off & company we dealt with dissolved and started again - said they did not have all their paperwork - Again like you we assumed it was all OK and we kept a huge file of everything - but guess what BR & electrical sign offs weren't in there. Lesson learned by me.

I absolutely share your crossness @heydidyouknow - in our case the stress of any sort of legal action was not worth just getting it fixed by the contractors , rather than us paying it ourselves - but everyone will have a different opinion. I have learned from this and our current house ( much smaller works ) - I have kept evidence of everything which needs sign off.

Wish you all the very best - it's stressful @heydidyouknow

Hi all
Sorry I don't think I have explained myself very well.

We are getting all the issues rectified and bringing it upto standard (proving it is) for building regs. That's not the issue.

My issue is that we paid a company to do all of this work, the extension, building regs the whole lot.

So once this is resolved, how can I take action against the company as I am totally pi$$ed off at the time, stress and money this has cost us during an already stressful moving process.

He told us that there's lots of properties he hasn't been able to issue certs for but none of this has been an issue yet because nobody else has wanted to sell so soon after extending!!

the building control company that our renovation company did I believe

It's the council's building inspectors that visit, not an outsourced company isn't it? So no council building inspectors did a visit?

@ShowOfHands

I've bought a house requiring an indemnity policy. I did expect the vendor to pay for it. I didn't expect a reduction in price. Same when we sold. We paid for the ongoing indemnity, the buyer paid the asking price.

Same here.

As long as the issue was adequately covered by the policy, I was happy to proceed as agreed.

It's a tricky one.... I had a similar issue with my electrician, we did a major refurb.
Used an independent Building Control company got everything signed off.
A few years later found out somethings had not been wired up properly, it cost quite a lot of money to fix, original electrician went quiet on us and we had to get our original project manager to resolve, but it did have a financial impact on us and took months to sort out.
We decided to sell last year and although we had all permissions in place we did not have a copy of the electrical certificate. The electrician again was difficult, so in the end I paid someone to do a new one for me, it cost £900, I was so pissed off as we'd paid so much money for our work and I felt all these things should have been sorted out, but when you end up 3 years down the road it's a nightmare to get anyone back or even interested !
Lesson learned.... Make sure you get everything in place before paying the final accounts and have copies of all certificates.

@titchy no there's also independent building control services out there. From my very limited understanding, companies who work in a number of different local authorities sometimes use these companies so that they don't have to keep track of different local authority details and requirements.

I only learnt this 2 weeks ago though! There were so many people in and out of the house during the build (not even requiring access through the front door) that I don't know who was there and when.

@titchy you can now used a private building control company. Councils became too busy to do all the work themselves, so many people now use private building control companies, it all works fine as long as they don't go bust, which seems to have happened to OP

Thanks @Itscoldouthere lesson learnt indeed! good to know there's (an expensive) light at the end of the tunnel.

I have also in the past brought an indemnity policy for our buyers, it didn't effect the sale price, but not every buyer is happy with the whole indemnity thing, I'd be fine for something small, but I wouldn't for a big extension, I want to know the thing has been built properly, there no excuse for not getting building control in my eyes.
However I think if you've gone through doing everything properly it's always worth getting the proper paperwork in place.

@Itscoldouthere agreed. We had a house in the past we were viewing and there was an indemnity policy relating to the driveway if I recall. No biggie.....

But this is a large extension compromising a living room, study and bathroom. I can't see that any sane buyer isn't going to ask for a reduction in price, or just walk away'

@heydidyouknow yes... Just a PITA in your case that the building control have gone bust, so unfair.

We bought a house with a 2 storey rear extension, loft conversion, changed staircase position, removed chimney breast, new(-ish) windows, none of which had Building Control sign-off (or Planning Permission). Extension, building works & loft conversion were done in 1980 (to a high standard for the time), mortgage company / solicitors couldn't have cared less about the lack of paperwork due to the fact they'd been completed for so long, the only thing we had to get an indemnity policy for was the windows (cost £35). I suppose we should have asked the seller for it, but I wasn't going to quibble over £35. The house worked for us and we don't intend to move, so we didn't mind (plus it only cost £98k for 1200 square foot of house and a 500 square foot garage so it's not as if there is much value to lose!) If someone falls in love with your house, they'll find a way to get around the problems and buy it.

When I checked the online planning portal, I found that only one of the houses in our area (about 50 houses in total, all Victorian terraces) had planning permission for its rear extension, all the others had just been built without paperwork, incredibly common around here (West Yorkshire) when new bathroom / kitchen extensions were built in the 1970s and 80s. No one seems to care, the houses around here sell regularly and quickly even without the paperwork.

@Mondy planning permission is not the same as building control though, many extension are built under permitted development.
If you don't have building control you have no idea how things have been built, if they are safe, that can be risky especially if you are buying an expensive property.
I spent a lot of money doing our refurbishment I wouldn't risk not getting the best price possible when selling and to do that you need the correct paperwork.

[quote Itscoldouthere]@titchy you can now used a private building control company. Councils became too busy to do all the work themselves, so many people now use private building control companies, it all works fine as long as they don't go bust, which seems to have happened to OP[/quote]
Ah didn't know that! Sounds open to back-handers though...