No Completion Certificate

[Dogsandbabies]

Hello all,

I am hoping one of you could advise. We are in the process of buying a house that has had an extension. The owners never got a completion certificate from the council. My research tells me that indemnity insurance would be void if we invited the council to look at the extension and sign it off.

However we want to extend further so would need to invite the council. Has anyone been in that situation before?

Clearly I think I need to revise my offer to reflect the risk but I have no idea where to even begin putting a number to this.

Thanks.

Well it depends what you are hoping to achieve. Are you adding to the building as well as/attached to the other extension or pulling the extension down and starting again? Your solicitor should be advising you about the suitability and terms of the indemnity policy. Personally if it hasn’t been signed off or inspected by building control I would not be happy to add to it.

You insist that the current owner get the council out - they need retrospective sign off (regularisation). They need to pay for and arrange this. Sadly, there is likely to be a reason they didn't get it signed off. As in they know it won't meet regs. I speak from experience. If you are buying with a mortgage the lender will probably need to be informed and if it does turn out that it doesn't meet regs, the lender will likely devalue the house. Don't rely on indemnity policy for such a major thing.

I did get advice and spoke to the mortgage provider. I will get indemnity to start with but only to satisfy the lender.

It boils down to revising the offer but I am just stuck on how much to reduce my offer by. The structural survey did indicate that the structure is sound and looks according to plan. It is a two storey side extension so I am thinking revising by 20k.

How old is the extension?

Can’t imagine any chance of sellers dropping the price by 20k

If a two story side extension needs major restoration work it'll cost a lot more than twenty grand...

@Mildura

How old is the extension?

8 years

It may we’ll be that building control did carry out inspections during the work, but final inspection never took place, hence no certificate. This is pretty common.

@GreyhoundG1rl

If a two story side extension needs major restoration work it'll cost a lot more than twenty grand...

Obviously. But based on the survey I am confident that the risk I am taking is not that it needs replacing. Rather than they didn't use the correct insulation. Or something along those lines.

After 8 years no possibility of enforcement action. Any major defects should be obvious to a competent surveyor by now.
Definitely worth digging deeper with the vendors about what inspections took place during work. Did current vendors carry out extension?

Thanks @Mildura. They did the work. Had a baby apparently at the time and although as you correctly say council carried our inspections (I saw documentation that proves the visits) they never came to sign off.

I am keen to proceed but I am worried that maybe when I go to extend at the back I may need to rectify some of their work to get my certificate.

In that case I would suggest to them to get the inspector back to carry out the final inspection. Get them to explain to building control dept they are in the middle of a sale.

In my experience council building control are pretty good at arranging an inspection without delay in these circumstances.

There doesn’t seem any justification for asking for a £20k reduction.

In fairness that would be my ideal scenario. I am o my worried that the council would take months to carry out the inspection. Thanks for your advice. To put into context 20k equates to less than 5% of the value of the property.

It’s still £20k!! :-)

It obviously varies between areas, but my experience of local authorities near me is that visits would be within 3-4 working days.

If the council have done the inspections, the vendors need to phone up and get them to do the final inspection. Then a completion certificate will be issued. It’s a phone call to arrange. Building inspectors usually visit on the day you call if you are doing foundations for example as the builders can’t be stood around waiting or if there’s no urgency a couple of days.

In our place it was the kitchen rather than the extension and we went from £340k to £311k. It's going to cost us £30k to fix the issues to get it up to regs.

I needed a completion cert and they came out within two days. The issues we needed to attend to before we called them turned out not to be issues at all - the regulations had changed in the two years from when we had started.
A building done 8 years ago would have had different building regs, which is one reason they won't enforce any noncompliance now. As long as it is structurally sound then you have no worries. As for your own extension, if you disturb the old extension you will have to make it meet current regs.

Oh yes, visits front he council (a few months ago) were only taking a few days.

I think the most important thing is that it is structurally sound and so I would want a structural engineer to check it out at the vendors cost.

I was the vendor in this situation a few weeks ago, realising part of our renovation work had never been signed off, despite going through the correct channels at building control and several site visits. Once we realised the mistake, building control came out within 2 days and signed off the work. We got the completion certificate in the post a few days later. Hopefully your sellers will be looking into this right now if they want to not have further problems with buyers / lose you as buyers.

Thank you all! That has really put my mind at ease. I was thinking that it would take months to get the certificate.

Just wanted to thank you all again! The vendors took my advice (your advice) and rang the council this morning who came on the same day, today, and signed off the extension!

Expecting the paperwork Monday so we can exchange. Really appreciate all your comments and help.

Glad you were able to sort the issue easily. Something similar happened to us removing a wall. We realised we didn't have the certificate some time after the work was finished. We were able to get building control out for a final inspection and they emailed the certificate within a couple of days.

I'm in a similar situation so reading with interest. Built 25 years ago, all stages signed off but no final completion certificate.

I'm getting ready to phone up. We won't be asked to bring it up to current regulations will we? Wobbles.

Great news!

I see this so often, all the inspections carried out but the final ones get missed in the excitement of a project being finished, and builder and homeowner both assuming the other would deal with it.