Non-habitable loft room - Fixed staircase and building regs

[areyouhavingagiraffe]

Hi all, Me again, and another query!
I am in the middle of purchasing a 3 bedroom property, plus a loft room (note this is not advertised as an extra bedroom). The property is advertised as a 3 bedroom, and the mortgage valuation is based on a 3 bedroom. There is no planning or building regs for the loft room, and it has been in place since 2012 (maybe before), and I know this because I have seen it in old rightmove listings. The current vendors haven't done anything further to the room; it has a window, carpet, eaves storage, and a fixed staircase. Because of lack of building regs, it is not counted as a habitable room. My question is, has anyone had experience of purchasing a property like this and then going through building regs (I am aware there may be further works needed etc, a fire door at the top of stairs). I also wonder does the fixed staircase make it a "Habitable" room/ space under Building Regs?
I don't need the extra space. It's just me moving in, but would be grateful for any pearls of wisdom

The fixed staircase in itself doesn't make it a habitable room unless it met building regs when it was built. And apparently it didn't so no.
You could get a building regs guy in (for a fee) or loft converter who could advise you what needs doing to make it meet current regs.

We extended into the attic over 10 years ago, for building regs we needed smoke alarms on each floor (so adding 1 to attic floor in our case as we already had downstairs and upstairs) and also needed to add fire doors to every room on 1st floor and attic.

Fire doors was too much for us, we had not long replaced upstairs doors with nice ones and fire doors were very heavy and also only available in dead plain design. And we would not have been able to cut off the necessary corner of the attic door to make it fit.

So we left the 1st floor doors and got a normal door for the attic. It has been DDs room since then. But if we sell the house at some point, we will have to sell it as 3 bed (1 currently in use as study) and that the attic has been floored.

Pictures will show it as bedroom. Especially as you would have to build in a short single bed to the box room to turn it back into a bedroom, as we took 6 inches from it to fit the stairs to attic.

We did put the smoke alarm in though.

We have a staircase with br, wired smoke alarms, fire doors etc but the room itself is not "habitable". It would not pass current br as window too small and also has no central heating.

Just because there are no certified building regs, doesn't mean it doesn't meet building regs. We have a room much as you describe and chose not to apply to the council, or whoever, due to cost, however we know it would meet regulations, and if we were to sell would probably pay to out and install fire doors in order to be able to sell as a four bed.

As it is, we don't even have a door on it, as we think it looks much nicer without. It's more like an extension of the landing/office space.

We have just had our loft converted. I imagine there was a lot of building regs that I was not party to, but we were visited three times so that the buildings controller could see that various things had been done as they were done.

As PPs have said, we have fixed fire alarms on every floor, all habitable rooms have fire doors (they are heavier, but no longer have to swing closed, as I believe they once had to, and they are available in different styles - ours are not dissimilar to the original doors they replaced.), there is a minimum standard of sound insulation between the first floor and the loft, and heat insulation on the external walls, and the load-bearing joists need to be strong enough.

Our building officer was a private one, I think his visit and final signing off cost around £500.

@areyouhavingagiraffe

Hi all, Me again, and another query! I am in the middle of purchasing a 3 bedroom property, plus a loft room (note this is not advertised as an extra bedroom). The property is advertised as a 3 bedroom, and the mortgage valuation is based on a 3 bedroom. There is no planning or building regs for the loft room, and it has been in place since 2012 (maybe before), and I know this because I have seen it in old rightmove listings. The current vendors haven't done anything further to the room; it has a window, carpet, eaves storage, and a fixed staircase. Because of lack of building regs, it is not counted as a habitable room. My question is, has anyone had experience of purchasing a property like this and then going through building regs (I am aware there may be further works needed etc, a fire door at the top of stairs). I also wonder does the fixed staircase make it a "Habitable" room/ space under Building Regs? I don't need the extra space. It's just me moving in, but would be grateful for any pearls of wisdom

We bought such a property, except it has a spiral staircase up into the loft, which we use as a home office / music room / sewing room. We’re not bothered about it being classed as a bedroom as the cost to do so would not be clawed back in terms of value to the property. We had an indemnity policy sorted to cover lack of building regs. Our neighbour is currently having their loft done to building regs - they’ve had to lower the bedroom ceilings, have 3 steels put in, new beams. All the doors have had to be replaced with fire doors. It’s a massive job! I’d say, unless you need an extra bedroom and are willing to take a hit on the cost of getting it up to code, leave it as it is. (be aware, if it is used as a bedroom and there’s a fire, your insurance is invalidated as it’s not classed as a bedroom)

Oh yes, the stairs couldn't be steeper than a certain angle (possibly 42°), I think they needed to be a minimum width and there needed to be enough headroom on the existing stairs, which necessitated moving the box room wall approximately 30cm.

Thanks all. I had read some threads on Mumsnet where people had said "they wouldn't touch it with a bargepole" but this seems to be where houses have been incorrectly advertised as 4 bedrooms, only to find out this includes bedrooms in the loft with no consent/ building regs. I think I will contact a consultant on the building regs, instead of the Council, and then I can decide what I want to do.