Underpinning - urgent advice

[reddevilchris2018]

Dear London Underpinning,

I urgently need advice, about a situation that has arisen regarding the sale of my residential property in London.

Last year, my prospective buyers’ found out through their solicitors that my home had been underpinned.

I contacted building control at my local council, and received a response informing me of the following:

1. Approval Notice for Underpinning dated 5th March 1993

However, in an email from Council, they stated that upon inspecting their archives, they had only retained documents for 15 years. They were able to recreate the approval notice using the information on their database.

The database of Council suggests that inspections were carried out, but there are no records to indicate any contraventions were witnessed. Unfortunately, it does not indicate that a final inspection was conducted, nor a completion certificate was ever produced.

However, My Council suggested that it is not uncommon for projects of this age as completion certificates were only introduced a few months prior to this application being deposited. Consequently, builders often did not request the completion inspection.

They did suggest that it is possible to obtain an indemnity policy, which my solicitor did when we believed we had a buyer in place.

We currently have no way of proving whether the underpinning had ever been completed.

I would appreciate any advice you could offer.

Regards
Chris

I don't think you can get indemnity if you have told the council that you don't have evidence of a completion certificate. Could you get retrospective sign off? I
I.e dig a hole and get it checked? I am guessing the property might not be mortgagable without sign off if it has had subsidence previously which I assume is the reason the underpinning was done?

Not sure my message has come across correctly

we wasn’t living here when approval notice
was given someone else lived here before

2nd I have been able to get an indemnity policy for it already via my solicitors

3rd we don’t really have an idea if it’s even been underpinned that’s just it ??

weve lived here 20 years and had no issues with subsidence , house is about 120grs old

But thanks for the reply

But the issue is that there is documentation which is coming up in legal searches for your house saying that planning permission for underpinning was approved in 1993. So unless you can prove that it has been completed satisfactorily or that is wasn't needed (which is probably impossible) then it could affect whether the property is mortgagable and therefore make it very hard to sell.
It doesn't really matter if it was done before you bought the house as you own it now so it is your job to prove the house is in good state to the next potential owner.
I wouldn't buy it with out proof unless there was a big discount in case the underpinning needed to be redone.