Building notice but no completion certificate, help!

[arikel]

We are buying a house marketed as a four bed with a loft conversion.

The conversation was completed in 2010.

We have received from the vendor:

A letter from the council acknowledging receipt of a "sketch" and informing that it's permitted development so no full plans required.

A letter from building control acknowledging the building notice and suggesting they will visit the site during build.

A receipt for payment to the same council for "building regulations".

Nothing else: no completion certificate, no information of the works carried out or whether it complied to building regulations.

The building notice is listed on the council website (and came up in LA search) but there is no date for completion.

Furthermore, according to the council website:

"...these types of applications do not require a decision or approval..."

I also believe in 2010, LA were not required to issue a completion certificate unless requested to do so.

Can somebody help me piece all this together and work out whether this is actually ok?

Our structural surveyor thinks the build quality is fine. However both he and our conveyancer are of the opinion that given the lack of completion it’s a bit risky particularly in terms of resale (which we aren’t planning to do for 10+ years).

Any advice hugely appreciated

@Catmummyof2

We’re buying a house with an extension done under a buildings notice. The council told us they don’t issue or keep a copy of the completion certificate when it’s done under a notice, via an approved inspector. They just register the initial notice. The approved inspector (a private company) will have issued the completion certificate. We got a letter from the seller authorising us to contact the company, and they sent us copies of their paperwork.

A Building Notice and Initial Notice are separate things. A BN is via Local Authority Building Control and an IN is via an Approved Inspector.

I've been asked to pay for an indemnity policy on our sale, because of no completion certificate on some kitchen work we had done. I'm a bit annoyed by it as we were told by the council that we only needed to give Buildings Notice, which we did, and they came out and inspected, but with a BN you don't actually get a completion certificate. So it's not missing, as I didn't apply for Buildings Regs there was never going to be one.

I'm not sure that my buyer's conveyancer is familiar with the difference. I wonder if like @Catmummyof2 I could approach the inspector, but for the sake of £100 I just agreed to the policy.

Thank you so much all. We called the council anonymously and they confirmed that a completion certificate would have been required, so we have taken this back to the agents to ask if the vendor would contact them to get a copy if it exists....
We suspect it doesn’t but at least it’ll get a proper conversation started...
Agents have indicated they didn’t know initially that this was a problem but now appreciate it is.
What a ‘mare!!

@arikel , out of interest, what happened in the end? Potentially in the same boat!

@areyouhavingagiraffe I pulled out of a house for this very reason. An indemnity insurance policy is pretty useless. For a loft conversion I’d be very worried that the reason they don’t have it is because it’s not actually built properly (which is the strong suspicion with the one I refuse to buy).

I also pulled out of a house last year due to loft issue. However, I am now progressing purchase of another property and potentially missing certs for extension. I am starting to wonder whether any houses actually have paperwork for everything. So many places don't have paperwork in place, but have sold. Including the place I pulled out of last summer

I’d be much more worried about a loft than a regular extension. Often I think people don’t do proper due diligence before they buy.

I think that if someone is planning on not constructing a loft conversion in line with the regulations they are unlikely to bother submitting a building notice to the council and paying a fee to cover the building regs process.

What's more likely in the case outlined by the OP (which is realise is over a year old, so pretty academic now) is that inspections did take place whilst the work was taking place, but the final inspection/sign-off was never carried out. It's far from unheard of.

The older the alterations/extensions/conversion the less important any certificates become. There's not much a completions certificate for a 30 year old loft conversion is going to tell anybody.

Whereas if there's no paperwork for something done 3 years ago it would be a pretty serious concern.

Building control need to sign off, I had to sort mine out 6 years later because I forgot, council were really quick to sort it (had already been inspected 6 years ago)

I disagree @Mildura the house we were unfortunate enough to offer on had started the process then failed to continue. Our surveyor could point to things such as a bowing floor and roof which made it look pretty likely that it had to be converted properly.

also FYI indemnity policies are invalid if you’ve been in contact with the Council (for obvious reasons) so do be careful! And obviously no indemnity policy is going to make a building structurally sound…