Wrong reason given for no buildings regs...

[YouveGotAFastCar]

We bought a house with a converted attic room in '21. On the sellers paperwork, and in an email to our solicitors, the sellers stressed that it didn't have building regs as it requires a fire door, and that he hadn't managed to source one during Covid.

It's become apparent that the real reason may well have been that it doesn't have the height clearance, and therefore is build onto ceiling beams rather than floor beams. This was not picked up in our survey.

I'm woefully poor on housing and am trying to learn quickly, when we bought it was my first ever purchase and I was heavily pregnant, and maybe should have pushed him to sort the door. But if it turns out that he lied to us, would we be able to do anything now?

We'd counted on being able to get the room "official", and make it into a dormer. Without that ability, the house isn't big enough. There's no other extension options and it seems that not only can we not get the dormer, we can't use the upstairs room at all as it's not built correctly.

I absolutely appreciate that this might be "buyer beware". I'm not sure how that works in property, or when you have a survey.

Please be gentle! 😳

Could you add in steel beams to supplement the ceiling beams, or double up the ceiling beams (you can't make them deeper but you could make them twice the width to spread the additional weight). I would talk to a structural engineer. The fire door, staircase design and emergency exit routes tend to be the main problems with roof extensions.

How frustrating. We pulled out at a late stage over the same issue, although in our case there was a dormer which was also unsafe. Our full survey hadn’t spotted either but did flag up that the space didn’t meet regs and our solicitor therefore told us that the attic bedrooms couldn’t count and strongly advised us against buying. We then found a builder to look at how much it would cost to bring the rooms up to scratch and he spotted how unsafe it all was. The agents were spectacularly unhelpful and made us out to the owner as being overly picky about the paperwork but we weren’t prepared to buy a house that was potentially unsafe and needed a lot of money spending to make it better.

If you specifically tasked your surveyor with checking this out I would be seriously unhappy with them; you could look at whether recovering the remedial costs of changing ceilings through legal action is at all feasible but it’s so hard to successfully sue surveyors.

I don't think there's a lot you can do, I think it's fairly reasonable that the surveyor didn't pull up their carpets (unless your new builder/surveyor or whoever discovered the issue could tell just by looking?) The buyer didn't lie as such, in that he told you it had no building regs and presumably your solicitor warned you what that meant....
I think you need to decide;

• what do you need the room for, and can it be fit for that purpose? Can a surveyor/builder tell you how sturdy the current support is - is it safe to use as a bedroom despite not being at the level that achieves building regs, can you add support or lower your ceilings. If you wish to use the room ad a bedroom (unless you're renting it) you can - building regs can't stop what you do in your home - so if it's just to use the room as a bedroom get your builder to focus on that through whatever means and not ticking the building regs boxes (for example, if it's for a childs bedroom then the head height is a bit irrelevant - yes it's too low to be officially signed off as a bedroom by the council but a 5 yr old isn't going to care or bump their head on the ceiling)
• Were you aiming to get building regs to then sell it with the extra bedroom? Building regs officialy "sign off" a room as suitable for that purpose - If you need it for selling on then you definitely do need to get the regs signed off so you need a builder/project manager to help achieve this end.

We have a garage converted to a bedroom, when we bought the house they tried to say it was a 2 bed, it isn't, it's a 1 bed with a converted garage which had no planning permission or building regs, so we paid less for the house. We got an electrician to confirm it was safe and a builder to confirm it was structurally sound then we went ahead and used it as a bedroom - it doesn't need the regs for us to do this. We might look at getting regs before we sell it or we will sell as a 1 bed with a useful garage.

If it wasn’t an official bed room with building regs
1- the price should have reflected that (it’s ultimately a well done storage area!)
2- you should have had indemnity insurance

you can use it day to day but won’t be able to sell it on as a bedroom in the future (and as your price should have reflected that you won’t ’lose out’ just won’t cash in on the extra bedroom!

Most people these days reduce the ceiling height of the floor below to take into account the extra beams required, and planning permission will often not let you raise the overall roof height from the apex, so this is the way to go, especially is the original roof was rather shallow

I answered earlier up thread that nowadays the ceiling of the floor below is generally lowered.
However, planning permission and not sure about building regs can be checked at the local council. The normal searches would bring it up.
So this should have become apparent in the preliminaries before exchange of contracts
Where I live, it's all on line.
Also bear in mind that Building Regs have changed over the years, so This can affect how you proceed.

You need to go back to your surveyor on this one. I wouldn’t say it’s buyer beware, as a lay person you hired a professional to ensure you didn’t come up against any unknowns after completing. Yet here you are. They have insurances for these things, I’ve no idea what you could get but I’d certainly be sending an email to the solicitor to understand where you stand.
I don’t think this is buyer beware, also, if your seller lied on the official disclosures that’s a problem too. Not sure how you’d persue that other than raising a case in the courts, which could be costly and timely. Also nothing stopping him from saying this is what the tradesperson he hired had advised him.

If the vendors lied about the reason behind the lack of building regs, th3n surely there is a case against them. Vendors can omit information but they can't legally lie about it.

So the room has been incorrectly built and isn't safe / won't be able to obtain retroactive building warrants which will in turn allow the installation of a dormer?

Can I ask two things:

1. are you a cash buyer, or are you using one of the traditional lenders?
2. Did your solicitor notify you of the lack of building warrants and the potential risk?

The reason I ask is that if you were a cash buyer and your solicitor explained that there were no building warrants and they couldn't guarantee the standards of any works, and that there could be the risk of enforcement action etc. then they will likely have discharged their requirements as you've decided to take that risk.

If you've used one of the traditional lenders, it's most likely that they will also have had a duty to your lender, and so it would be worth checking if your lender was made aware of the position so that they could sign off on this. (But approach it rather delicately as you don't want to rile up your lender and risk your mortgage obviously!) It could be that the valuation didn't count this as a room so the lender wasn't too bothered but it is another potential line to pursue.

I know some posters have mentioned the possibility of a Title Indemnity Policy - most of these are to cover the risk of enforcement action. I can think of one policy in the market that might cover you discovering something and wanting it fixed, but even then it sometimes excludes planning and building conditions...

ETA: as you had a survey completed you need to look through the survey line by line and see what their limitations are. It may be that they state that this was apparent at the time of the survey but they have not been able to look at x, y, z in detail.

There absolutely will be a solution, it’s not rocket science. It’s just going to be very expensive if the current loft conversion has been done incorrectly.

Use a decent structural engineer and architect to do a little feasibility study to see how to maximise your head height and what your options are.

To all those saying to just use the room anyway, my reading of the OP's posts, she is wanting to build a dormer window to give the room more space. She won't be able to do that if the floor isn't strong enough.

When we sold our house with a converted loft we sold as a 3 bed rather than a 4 bed. It was 'an occasional room' rather than a bedroom ( even though wevused ut as one ) . We couldn't afford the structural regs and this worked for us but we didn't try to hoodwink the buyer by selling it this way. Could this be the case with your house ?

Impossible to give advice without pictures, but if a new staircase was put in to the loft, you will need a fire door [probably more than one!] or you can use intumescent paint. That's the easy bit. To provide a BR-compliant floor, you will need to drop the height of the ceiling below. This won't be a simple or cheap job.

You should check with your Local Authority if a building regs application was made for the loft conversion, and if so, when it was inspected and what the outstanding works were. If no application was made, then you should also check how the space was sold by the agents. If it was listed as a habitable room, then you will have a claim against them for mis selling, and against the seller for claiming it had regs. You can apply to your local authority for a regularisation application, but they will make you upgrade it to the necessary standards at your own cost. An indemnity policy only covers you for the cost of legal fees if the council take you to court, not for any costs to do the work itself, so totally worthless. You are better off making a claim against the agents and the seller for misselling to pay for the works to be done properly.

You can add joists alongside the existing ones. It’s called side slinging. A reputable loft company would have employed this method. Or said the loft could not be converted at all as the weight of the loft could not be supported. I think the joists would need to be secured effectively, As it’s not usable, the only way out is to get a feasibility study done.

If the previous owner has cut into the roof beams to get height, you are in trouble. This needs evaluation too. Never buy a loft converted house without seeing the Building Regs document AND familiarize yourself with what’s required. Easy enough to research on line. Surveyors are not going to spot this and everyone has been too trusting. If one thing is wrong, it is telling you something!

It was never habitable without fire door(s). Are they in the rest of the house as required?

Many LAs outsource Building Control. They are mostly very poor.

Your comment about LA's outsourcing is simply not true. A small percentage of LA's outsource to a private company, but the large majority have their own BC teams.

Home owners have the option to use a private company if they wish. The service should theoretically be the same, but the private company is the only one trying to make a profit from you. They generally achieve that by doing less inspections under a risk assessment process which means that they are less likely to pick up the issues that you as the homeowner should want to be highlighted.

I needed fire doors for my attic conversion or it wouldn't have passed building regs

Ok. So. Few things

go back to your solicitor. Ask why no indemnity and how they will put this right.

I would suspect it’s not upto surveyor as whilst it won’t meet regs lots wouldn’t. And they might not have known if it were done pre regs for this

explore Taking indemity in case of action. They are normally about 100 quid. . Do through solicitor.

get a good builder or surveyor to detail how to put it right. . More importantly do safety assessment. Is it dangerous as opposed to just doesn’t meet regs

I live in a conservation area and some of the small cottages here have very strict rules with regards to having the lofts converted meaning the ceiling height would be too low.

What everyone does is lower the ceiling in the rooms below to give you the head height above.

You'd be able to do this too if you have enough wiggle room with the ceiling heights in the rooms below. That's your only realistic solution if you want to get this fixed.

There is only a height requirement of 2m over a stair, which can be reduced slightly on attic stairs. I would speak to your local building control team as there is no height limit on a room. You may be able to build a dormer over the stairs to give you the head room you need or you could speak to a structural engineer who could put a steel beam under the mid span of your ceiling beams to support them so you don't have to increase the height.
The indemnity policies that others have posted only cover you for the costs of a court case if the council bring enforcement action against you for not doing the work properly. It does not cover you or anyone else for any building work, or injury/death caused by you using the unauthorised space as a habitable room.

I would see a structural engineer. There maybe other options here. We used to double up and brace ceiling joists to avoid having to lay deeper floor joists. Think this was common practice. There is also other options such as steels which may enable you to stay in the required ceiling joist depth.

i believe surveyor is at fault here if you paid for a full structural survey.
Wise move if you have as he is now the person to contact, it is his job to point out things that are not correct, have you read back through his report sent to you to check?

This is fire regulation info: you need a fire door.

Outsourcing is not that unusual and the profit is besides the point. All should be qualified to do the job. In this case one assumes no one was asked.

Who is telling you the current situation is not correct?

If you have concerns about the structural integrity of the conversion, ask a structutal engineer to look at it and provide a report.

An indemnity insurance policy only stops the local authority prosecuting you for lack of building regs, it will not rectify the situation.

When was the conversion completed? It may have met the building regs at the time and sign off was not done due to the lack of a fire door. The regs do change quite often. It is not clear if the conversion was done during the last 4 years or only the door could not be obtained - the building work may have taken many years.

There are always solutions to problems - the structural engineer will tell you what needs to be done to install a dormer and the additional work required to obtain building reg sign off for the room to become a proper room.