Bannister help

[Isthisrealomgwow]

In the process of having house valued/put on market.
Estate agent has said the lack of bannister will be flagged by a surveyor as a big issue - dangerous.
It was never flagged with our surveyor when we purchased.
Anyway, the stairs are similar to the photo below. One issue we have is that it is impossible to get furniture/large items up and down the stairs with any form of fixed railings in place.
What would you do to resolve this? Preferably as cheap as possible.
Many thanks

Rope bannister on the wall.

Thanks @BeBraveLittlePenguin I was thinking that, or a metal one whichbis about 40 quid from amazon.
The EA has said we need to enclose the open space due to fall risks.

If you put something on the wall it will still be unsafe the open side needs enclosing and there are regulations for stairs.

https://www.pearstairs.co.uk/staircase-buillding-regulations/#:~:text=bottom%20two%20steps.-,In%20all%20the%20buildings%20handrail%20height%20should%20be%20between%20900mm,handrail%20to%20the%20pitch%20line.&text=Regulations%20stipulate%20that%20a%20100mm,such%20as%20between%20glass%20panels.

Honestly I think I’d get any furniture you can’t take apart down now and store it somewhere (garage/ storage unit) and then just put a basic handrail in (like pine spindles etc) on the open side before you get pictures taken.

No doubt you can get removable ones but they are likely to be much more expensive and most people are used to having to buy beds and wardrobes in kit form and then assembling them upstairs. If it’s a straight run like the pic it shouldn’t be too bad, you could definitely get a double/ king mattress up those.

Add something like this? Cheap and easy. Perhaps getting your big furniture down first?

These are great ideas.

Sadly there is a 180 bend with 3 more stairs at the bottom.

So, even getting a single mattress down, without it open, is impossible.

I'm a bit miffed that it's an issue now, it wasn't 5 years ago when we bought the house.

That should have been picked up by the surveyor, our stairs are exactly the same with a bend at the bottom and then more steps. We bought our house 23 years ago it had a rope banister and the surveyor raised it as unsafe and not meeting regulations then so it looks like you were let down when you bought the house

We have the same issue of getting large furniture upstairs, we have a normal spindle bannister on the stairs and took it off to get furniture up. No plans to move at the moment but will take it off to get furniture out again.

We have a normal.spindle bannister in place that can be removed if needed.

I wouldn't be massively concerned about what the surveyor might or might not say about your choice of internal fixtures and fittings tbh.

The surveyor of the property I'm buying complained in their report that some internal doors had been removed. It's literally one door, and I think it creates a much nicer flow round the downstairs without one.

@zingally we are the same. We have 2 doors that weren't in the property when we moved in, as one wouldn't open due to layout of kitchen and the other one caused a lot of lost space.
The EA commented on it that buyers want doors.
We didn't.

However a missing door might not contravene building regulations but no handrail on stairs will

I think it should have been an issue then as well. We bought a housemore than 5 years ago that had a banister but apparently the gaps in it were classed as unsafe as they were so big. So no banister at all I imagine was also a problem.

Can you get a carpenter to quote for a bolted in but removable set up? My friend had one built to be removable when she had a house like this. Just needs the right size spanners to remove the bolts, and it all comes down, meaning big furniture goes up and down with ease. .

This is incredibly dangerous, my grandad died after falling down stairs that had had the banister removed like that.

Its a safety issue and would not pass building regulation, of course people doing it in the own home after its been built won't flag building regs (they don't come randomly inspecting houses) but if you are selling it of course someone paid to come survey it will point this out to every potential buyer they are hired by.

You'll have a smaller pool of buyers because it will put off people with young children or balance/mobility/vision issues or older visitors.

Are there any cheap ways to enclose the space, that can also be removed to allow for furniture to be moved down the stairs?

Our surveyor, 5 years ago, never picked up on it.

But you don’t need your house to be up to current building regs , if you did then hardly anyone would be able to sell their house.

Removable railings?

You will actually find they do matter.

I mean they can't stop you selling it (condemned houses that are structurally unsafe and not fit for habitation can be sold to be demolished or fixed, a house does not need to be livable to be exchanged) but there is laws on what you can legally list based on building regs.

For example: if your loft conversion that isn't up to current regulations it can NOT be listed as a habitable room. That is why many houses with nice looking attic rooms show them in photos but do not list them among the bedrooms etc... rather listing it as a temporary attic space or boarded attic storage and so on.

But shes not selling the house as having a loft conversion, its no handrail so they can still sell the house whether its up to current regs or not.

so no they don’t matter.

They do to the buyer which is the whole point... OP doesn't want to sell her house for a reduced rate as a doer up, she wants to fix the simple issue and not deal with reduced offers.