Radon gas in east London properties with cellar. How big a deal?

[Sandrine1982]

So I'm looking at this map of areas affected by radon gas in the UK and there are some areas in London that are light yellow so small risk.

We've just viewed a house in east London that's in one of these areas. It's a victorian house with a large cellar. We like it and we want to make an offer.

So, question for those who had a similar type if property in London. Did the searches come back with a mention radon? What percentage? Where in London? Has anyone had a radon test done before they completed?

Any info gratefully received, TIA folks xxx

Sorry for typos:
*mention of radon
*similar type of property

My DH’s work concerns radioactive material and checking safety precautions , and wouldn’t be concerned. Your solicitor should check into it all in the searches.

We live in an area of high radon (South West). If you want a test done before completion it takes 3 months.

It’s really not that big a deal. People started panicking about today in recent years, but it’s really not that big an issue. As Human beings we are bombarded with radiation and other particles from different sources every single day.

Radon occurs naturally in many places in the UK. You will get some comments that suggested if you step into the house you will automatically die of lung cancer and this is not correct.

a cellar needs to be well-ventilated to keep it dry. I believe the same will also control Radon

I used to live in East London and Radon is not something we ever heard about locally, or tested for. Parts of the West Country it is a common thing to test for, and there is remedial action you can take but I have never been involved with it.

Any environmental search reports will include radon risk from the UK Radon maps. You can do a quick 10 day test to see if anything is picked up, but ideally you’d want to monitor over 3 months. So that the purchase isn’t held up, your solicitor could negotiate a retention that is either released back to the vendor on completion of the monitoring (if negligible levels detected) or is used to put in ventilation measures - increasing air bricks / adding a fan or creating a sump.

www.ukradon.org/cms/assets/gfx/content/resource_3557cs51da85a3c3.pdf

Thanks everyone. So we got our searches back and the relevant sections says:

"The property is in a radon affected area, as between 1 and 3% of homes are above the action level".

Is this a problem? Has anyone who had a similar result tested their property and found high readings?

TIA