Close to completing on a house. Turns out that a large extension doesn't have building regulation certificate

[User012389]

It is a mid century house. It has a large, single storey annexe and has had the wall pulled through between a living room and conservatory. Sellers have produced planning permission certificates but it seems like they're unable to provide building reg certification from the council or private. It was done just under 10 years ago. I don't feel like indemnity insurance is enough here. It's a fairly recent extension and I don't think it's defensible to have not got certification. Am I making too much of this? What are our options. Solicitor seems to think that obtaining retrospective certificate is the best way forward.

I wouldn't be happy with that. We had an extension built in our previous house in 2013 and we had Building Control visit 5 times during the build.

If Building Control/Building regs didn't sign it off, why not? Was it that they refused (our sign off was refused on 1st application as the soil stack for the bathroom wasn't sited in the right place) or that it was never applied for?

We’ve just had a similar situation only we are the sellers. We ended up reporting this to the council (7 years between completion of building work and now) and asking for a sign off from building control. They asked for updated gas and electric certificates which meant we had to do a bit of extra work which cost a couple of thousand to get this to comply with the latest building regulations. Then we had a visit from the inspector and got a sign off and a completion certificate which we provided to the buyer.

In your situation my main concern will be not so much with the completion certificate but with how the work was done and was it safe. On our end we had done everything by the book, including having visits from building control when the work was done. We just didn’t do the final step which was to get the final sign off. If there is any doubt that the work was not done properly or there are any safety concerns I ‘d pull out. But if it’s just a matter of paperwork, I wouldn’t worry and take out the indemnity insurance. Also, if the work was done less than 10 years ago it should be easy enough to get it signed off now. I think the difference with us was that we did this very early in the process so it never impacted the timelines of the transaction,

Yes I'm not very happy either. Is it just as safe to gain retrospective certification and if so would anyone know how long it's likely to take? I'm really annoyed as they fartarsed around not filling in the draft contract for weeks then they must have known that this was going to be an issue! Seriously wondering whether to just cut our losses but I suspect we might even also lose the sale of our house if we do

I would get them to apply for the retrospective permission, not you. And yes, I’m sure they knew this would be a problem and were hoping you’d be too committed to pull out.

I’d give them a short deadline to get retrospective permission, and then walk away. It’s unlikely you’ll lose your buyer, if they start looking for a new property now they aren’t going to be in any faster than if they wait for you to find somewhere else.

I think gaining retrospective sign off is not hard if the work was done properly. Even then we had to make some changes and get our extension up to current building regulations. The whole process took 2 months (but was easy). If on the other hand the work is unlikely to meet building regs then you are looking at a bigger problem. Also consider than your sellers are likely to pull out of the transaction and find a buyer who will be happy with an indemnity insurance if you ask them to go back to the council for sign off.

Sorry I'm not trying to be argumentative but I'm just curious what stopped you getting the final signoff? I'm asking because this is what concerns me about our sellers. This is a very recently done extension. The only reason I can come up with for somebody not bothering to seek the certificate (not just that they've lost it) is that they have something to hide and/or they have cheaped out on the building works. This is what really concerns me. To me it's indefensible to not do things by the book especially when you must know that it is going to come up on surveys

Quite honestly I don't know how much I value this building certificates to make sure the work was done properly. You must have it for the sake of regulation. But now that I'm stripping my flat back to the bone, almost nothing was done properly and they did all planning permission and building control certifications...
The answer is: You will only find out if things were done accordingly, with time...

We were told that there must be a door between a conservatory and the main dwelling, for reasons relating to fire safety, security and thermal efficiency. Without it the house we were buying was therefore failing building regs.

We had a massive back and forth with the mortgage provider and seller’s solicitors about it. They had to put doors on before it could complete.

That, I suspect, is why you aren’t getting a building regs certificate.

See example info online here!

https://www.conservatoryoutlet.co.uk/living-spaces/faqs/do-you-have-to-have-a-door-between-conservatory-and-house/#:~:text=One%20question%20that%20often%20comes,to%20have%20a%20separating%20door.

I get it, it’s a very fair question. I can only speak for our situation and the reason we didn’t do it is pure laziness. My husband’s that is. He is not good with paperwork and after spending 3-4 months living on a building site and helping to manage the work, I think he was just really done with it all. He kept saying, oh I need to do it, I need to do it and it just never got done. I can assure you that when people do building work in their own homes, where their kids live, they generally do not do it in an unsafe way. Like I said, we did everything by the book (except the last part) and our extension is one of the best we have seen because my husband made sure we only did the best (he works in construction). He is just crap with paperwork. And when it came to selling, we didn’t wait for our buyer to point out that we didn’t have it. We weren’t hiding it or anything. We notified the council the moment we decided we wanted to sell the house and got it sorted by the time our buyer received the draft contract and all the paperwork. This was months before exchange. Again, this is just us and I can’t speak for other people. I think if you take a decent builder to have a look at the work, it will be easy to see if they have cut corners or done a shoddy job. I would place more value on this than having that last piece of paper.

Not worth the paper those are written on. Just make sure build is sound.

@User012389I’ve also been the seller in this situation. Also just pure laziness and not getting round to it. Before putting our house on the market I got in touch with our council’s planning department and they sent one of their building standards surveyor out to have a look. We had to provide the safety certificates that the builder had given us and they issued the completion certificate. Whole process took around 6 weeks I think. I asked the council surveyor if this happened a lot and he said yes. Our buyers were happy. What did you decide to do?

We haven't decided what to do yet. We still don't have a straight answer as to what exactly the problem is ie whether it's that a regulations certificate was never granted or whether they just can't find the certificate. Both the solicitors and the estate agent have basically refused to do much to get a straight answer from the seller so I've written my solicitors a firm email saying that they need to propose a solution urgently. If I don't hear anything in the next few days then I guess I'm going to have to start seriously threatening to pull out based on the delay alone. It's worth mentioning also that the seller took over 2 months to get the draft contract in and only did that when we really pushed. Our buyers made their offer end of February and we made our's just a few days later. I'm so annoyed right now!

We had this problem as a seller, except we had had the final building regs inspection, the council just hadn’t got to registering it or issuing the cert (18 months after the inspection!) Got them to re-inspect and certify, was a quick process and didn’t cost us anything as they admitted it was their fault - they had records of the inspection but had lost the ‘paperwork’.

I’m not surprised you’re annoyed. They must have known it would be a problem.

What does your survey say about the extension? If you got a structural survey any glaring problems surely would’ve been picked up especially as they’re v hot on fire safety & thermal efficiency & structural integrity. You can ask your surveyor in person as well to explain their findings on the survey. I’d be wary personally & if proceeding would expect them to retrospectively apply for it not you.

Nothing bought up on survey. The survey specifically said that there's nothing on the entire survey which you wouldn't expect in a house this age

Thats weird! Is it in really good order then maintenance wise - everywhere? Does it just say “rear extension built in x made of y etc etc & then “check it was done to building regulations as it exceeds permitted dev” type thing?

I have pulled out in this situation, extension bore no similarity to the plans. Was worried about resale.

I have also had to get a porch sorted when the building regs hadn't been done by the company as they went bustbut didn't tell us that the final sign ofg wasn't done. Lady from the Council threatened demolition but sorted it quickly in the circumstances.

@User012389we are doing a reno and are at Building Works Started stage. We have no timescale to complete, but every single stage has been documented with the Building Regs team at our district council. So that is correct depth foundations, approved drawings and measurements on steels and catnic beams, inspections of roof joists stage, drain runs, soakaway placement and insulation stages to ensure that they follow the plans that were submitted to Building Control when permission to start was given. We have submitted the electrical sign off certificate by a competent sparky and that follows the placement of things like smoke and heat alarms etc.
we have submitted photos to prove banister railings and other guardings and also fire doors, window glass standards, intumescent paint certification for steels where we could not use certain fire boarding plus extraction routes and fire foam usage in a firebreak wall.

We have a couple of small jobs to finish such as a soil stack vent and one final fire door, then we will be able to request final inspection and hope they mark our homework well.

Then and only then will we move to Building Works Completed stage approval. If there is anything flagged we will have to go back and rectify.

We had a loft conversion, had building control inspections. All went well, really reliable good quality builders. But then the last few questions and bits of paperwork never made it to the council - builders said they would have done (and I definitely don't trust council records so don"t know for definite) - due to Covid lockdowns it all got left for years and the builders shut down their company so no longer had access to their emails or documentation. So anyway, we paid for retrospective electrical check and building control did a final inspection and have now issued us our certificate (phew!).

We had a very similar situation - single story extension, removing a wall between living room and extension. No BR sign off. It was 15 years before we bought.

We had a proper surveyor come round and have a look. He said it looked fine, and tbh if it wasn’t it would likely have caused obvious issues in the 15 years since it had been done. We chose to go ahead, but we did like and trust the sellers and I think if they had been difficult otherwise it might have been a dealbreaker.