No regulations approval for removing a load bearing wall

[RockytheBasket]

A load bearing wall was removed over ten years ago with no regulations approval. RSJ was installed. Would this be an issue to buy/sell?

If this is your house, get it regularised by making a retrospective application, if it is one you are buying ask the Vendors to do so.

How long will that take? Wall wasn't removed by the owner of the house

Just get an indemnity policy. If the work wasn't done by the seller then they have no more idea than you do and without invasive work there will be no way of knowing. I had this with my last sale, the buyers wanting details about work that we hadn't done and had no idea when in the properties 100+ year history it had been done.

A lot of people won’t accept indemnity insurance in these circumstances
It is not a substitute for consents,it is very much 2nd best
If you are the buyer don’t accept it

@user1487194234

A lot of people won’t accept indemnity insurance in these circumstances It is not a substitute for consents,it is very much 2nd best If you are the buyer don’t accept it

When you say a lot of people who do you mean? Buyers, mortgage companies, randoms on the internet?

The reason for building regulations is that when a load bearing wall is removed their have to be calculations to work out that the RSJ used is sufficient for the support of the property. It may be likely that after 10 years if it was going to fall down it would have by now but you don't know what camouflaging work could have been done to cracks etc to cover up movement in the building. If it becomes apparent after you purchase that there is a major issue it becomes your costly mistake to rectify. Not worth it in my opinion.

@redastherose

The reason for building regulations is that when a load bearing wall is removed their have to be calculations to work out that the RSJ used is sufficient for the support of the property. It may be likely that after 10 years if it was going to fall down it would have by now but you don't know what camouflaging work could have been done to cracks etc to cover up movement in the building. If it becomes apparent after you purchase that there is a major issue it becomes your costly mistake to rectify. Not worth it in my opinion.

By all means get a full structural survey but you can't expect someone to vouch for work that may have been done 10, 20, 30 or 100 years ago.

It is more of a priority to check it is structurally sound than to regularise retrospectively, unless you plan to sell on quickly.

A structure survey was done, but it's not very helpful as surveyors also want to cover themselves and only said it cannot be estimated without revealing the work...

What does the indemnity insurance cover?

What does the indemnity insurance cover?

The costs associated with legal action if the local authority serves a building regs enforcement notice.

Chances of which for something like this, after 10 years = slightly less than zero.

Therefore indemnity pretty pointless.

Well the chances of a seller wanting to start hacking plaster off the walls to satisfy your curiosity are pretty much slim to none so you just need to make a decision about whether you think it iOS a risk worth taking. It could have been that way for 100 years depending on the property, there is no way of knowing without invasive work which a seller would be crazy to agree to. There are plenty of buyers out there who are happy to take a view on things like this. Given your other threads and your anxiety about meeting the SDLT deadline you need to bear in mind if you pull out now you won't complete on a new property before the end of june i wouldn't think.

IME as a professional dealing with property for many years

@user1487194234

IME as a professional dealing with property for many years

Sorry just trying to clarify. Are you saying you were actually just speaking about yourself when you said 'lots of people'?

It’ll be £2-3k to fix if there’s anything wrong with it - £1k for an engineer to check it / do the calculations, and if the RSJ is wrong, you’ll need another £1-2k to put a new one in + decorate.

Is your onwards purchase worth £2-3k to you? In which case, crack on.

It’s not a massive deal.

We had to get retrospective building regs for something similar many years ago - they only had to make small holes inThe wall to enable them to see that the correct rsj was installed and it was easy to fill and paint over afterwards.

This comes down to how risk averse you are.

The only way of checking the work was done correctly and of getting retrospective sign off would be to physically expose the beam by hacking off the plaster. You could ask the vendors to do this but unless they are desparate for the sale they will probably tell you to jog on.

So you have to decide if you want to go for it and take the risk that you might have to put this right yourself if there's a problem or if you'd rather walk away.

My experience of supervising a large number of conveyancing transactions weekly

@bilbodog

We had to get retrospective building regs for something similar many years ago - they only had to make small holes inThe wall to enable them to see that the correct rsj was installed and it was easy to fill and paint over afterwards.

Was the inspection carried out by a structure engineer?

@NotDavidTennant

This comes down to how risk averse you are.

The only way of checking the work was done correctly and of getting retrospective sign off would be to physically expose the beam by hacking off the plaster. You could ask the vendors to do this but unless they are desparate for the sale they will probably tell you to jog on.

So you have to decide if you want to go for it and take the risk that you might have to put this right yourself if there's a problem or if you'd rather walk away.

I now understand why most of the people wouldn't buy a house needs lots of work doing... I feel we are buying a mystery box with endless issues...

Really hope in the future, there will be a disclosure list available to the buyers before making an offer, such things like missing regulations approval should be disclosed in the beginning.

Really hope in the future, there will be a disclosure list available to the buyers before making an offer, such things like missing regulations approval should be disclosed in the beginning

The problem is it is often only when part way through a sale that it becomes obvious that such certificates are not available.

Sometimes people don't realise work needs building regs.
Sometimes people have building control out to inspect but forget to request the final visit for sign off and certification.
Sometimes people deliberately try to conceal work being done incorrectly.
Sometimes the work is old and done by a previous owner.
Sometimes work was done before it was common to issue building regs certificates.

Indemnity insurance is accepted by mortgage providers and solicitors every if not worth the paper it's written on. I just had to buy a £250 policy because the head lease of the flat I'm selling didn't categorically say flat owners had access to the gardens and bin store, even though all have been using the comminagardrns and bin store (and paying fir their upkeep) since the 70s when the building was converted. I'm not sure what I was indemnifying them against to be honest.
Anyway, if you know an rsj was installed, and better yet if you have the calculations fir it, then it would not be much of an issue to get a regularisation certificate, which can be sorted in days. All solicitors will insist on some sort of certificate or the dreaded Indemnity. The real issue is if it wasn't done properly and is structurally unsound.

An indemnity policy won't help you here

An indemnity policy won't help you here

Depends what the objective is.

My solicitor is telling me an indemnity insurance will mean very little to us.

What is your concern? If it's that it isn't sound, then a previous poster has given an idea of what the costs for sorting it out would be. What are you worried about?