Listed building retrospective planning permission: solicitor's computer says no

[Venusflytart]

I am in the process of buying a grade II listed property, offer accepted April 2021. It is immaculate in its presentation, and a listed-building survey confirmed it is structurally sound. I have had some trouble engaging with my (online) estate agent, as they seemed EXTREMELY reluctant to respond to my queries either via email or via a phone call. After sending them a slightly irritate email last week they finally explained the issues.

The building was extended some time ago (in the 1970-1980s presumably) and a separate garage was built. Neither have planning permission. The sellers have taken out indemnity insurance and claim these issues were not a problem when they bought the property about 10 years ago. They bought with a mortgage, and were not cash buyers.

My conveyancer states that they should seek retrospective permission for the alterations and state that my mortgage lender will not agree to me buying this property without the required consents in place.

The sellers do not wish to seek retrospective consent, stating this will take months, and it will invalidate their indemnity insurance, they let us know officially via their solicitor. So I am stuck now. The sale of this building has fallen through before late last year )presumably due to this issue?)

The sellers' estate agent (who I am aware don't work for me) say that I should jus drop this conveyancer and get the conveyancer who arranger the sale when my sellers were buying this place, as the situation was unchanged then. I could then just take on indemnity insurance and continue like apparently people in this house have done for the last 40 years.

I am ready to walk away, but I was wondering whether this is really such a big issue, or whether my conveyancer is just really by-the-book? Surely this sort of thing must come up a lot, otherwise why would indemnity insurance exist? Or does that not cover listed buildings? BTW, the solicitor doesn't get paid if the sale doesn't go through, so they are advising against their own interests. Thanks for your opinions and/or advice!

Neighneigh, that is really good to know and I will (still) check it out. Actually I think I am beyond that point now, as there is another (smaller) issue involving a boundary, that could be resolved by sellers' actions, where they have shown similar stubbornness and refuse to address it. I didn't mention it here, as it would not involve me potentially breaking the law if I would go ahead. The sellers have revealed themselves to be people I would rather not be involved with!

I think the sellers strongly suspect that retrospective permission would be turned down and they would end up with a huge amount of work and financial cost. They want you to buy the house and have to deal with this massive problem.

I'm glad you're walking away, but sorry too as it was probably lovely.

The difficulty for your solicitor is that they will be acting for the lender as well as you and this could potentially have significant value implications.

I pulled out of a purchase of a flat in a listed building because of this. The seller had moved an internal wall to make a second bedroom without LBC. The management of the building agreed, and the seller kept going on about this and that she used a reputable builder. That didn't matter. My solicitor asked a listed buildings planning bod and they said while councils rarely pursue lack of building regs after a year the LBC is essential. Ironically I wanted to move the wall back to its original position, but my solicitor said I'd need retrospective LBC for the first change, before applying to change it back (insane). The application would be around £1500 and the seller refused.
Another issue was that if the listed building people insisted things were put back as before it would go back to a one bedroom flat, instantly devaluing it. Anyway I withdrew - I'm pretty chilled about most things but listed building people are strict!

I think the sellers probably (like me) did not understand the severity of the situation.

Possibly when they bought the house they had duff advice, but I think they know exactly how serious it is now, and that's exactly why they don't want to bring it to the notice of the authorities themselves - on top of the potential cost they would invalidate their own indemnity policy.

They just want to kick the can down the road so it becomes their buyers problem!

I can't help with the central question here but I don't think you could switch to the original conveyancer. There would likely be a conflict of interest in which case he/she should refuse to act for you.

Sorry it hasn't gone well. If you continue you could potentially have problems trying to sell in the future. Best avoided.

Livingintheclouds that is madness!

I have emailed my conveyancer now to pull out. He might reply at some point. Or not.

Thanks for pointing the original solicitor issue TheLette I had not thought of that. Right, it seems that there's nothing I could have done in this case, on to the next dream home.

It will indeed become SEP (somebody else's problem), to end with a Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.

I recall someone DH worked with having a similar issue as homeowners had replaced all windows in listed building with white pvc.
It was flagged up almost immediately and he was told he’d have to replace them all almost immediately as they would enforce. Sellers refused to do anything and he walked away.
I believe it was sold and dropped again as well.

Major alterations to Grade II listed without planning permission?

The sellers don't want to apply because they know it will be retrospectively refused.

I'm glad you're walking away, OP.

If they didn't get LBC one wonders if they had applied for PP and Building Regulations, removing part of the rear wall is quite a major event that should be professionally scrutinised.

We walked away from 2 gorgeous listed houses as the previous owners had done work to them without approval. It can be far more expensive to do building work on listed properties (inspectors can be very 'fussy') and I couldn't risk committing to an unknowable bill.