Building control sign off - please help

[Fourlittlepiggies]

We had a steel framed extension done a year ago but builders who buggered off mid way through, leaving us 30k down and with a HUGE amount of stress. We then hired a new builder to finish the work and get building control sign off but they have now also disappeared.

We will want to sell in the next 2 years. I am so drained from all of this, and had a baby as it was all going wrong. What do we do to get the neccessary sign offs? I have none of the structural drawings or evidence I think is needed. Luckily the extension is lovely inside but I think prospective buyers will give us a wide berth with the steel frame and lack of sign off. Please help.

Call the council. When we had an extension the builder would phone them to come out. Google the number for building control

Yes agree to call building controls at the council. Our building controls company went AWOL (I think they went bankrupt or something). We had to do a “reversion” to the council and then they signed it off for us. We did have to pay a fair bit though and I did have lots of photos from our builders. But anyway that’s the best place to start.

The council. You would have submitted this to them before the start then they come out whenever required and finally sign off at the end.

Thank you, I will try the council. The builders were using Stroma but didn’t pay Stroma’s bills either so they stopped working. Sadly Stroma wouldn’t finish the job unless we paid all of the unpaid invoices and produced the info/ photos that only the builders have.

Our private building g control also went bust and builders didn’t give a monkey’s, left us to it. Fortunately we had taken lots of photos. It cost us another £1000 in fees, but they were fine to deal with. It turned out that they were inundated with bust building regs clients so had to take a ‘pragmatic’ approach.

Did you go to the council directly?

Yes we did.
Council informed us that we might be able to obtain notes from bankrupt building regs company’s visits that they’d made before bankruptcy. We had to pay £100s to the agency, not knowing what they had on record. Fortunately they had evidenced the steels going in correctly, and then we had to evidence that everything they questioned in the notes had been done. As I said, after a (long, stressful) while, they took a pragmatic approach and accepted photos. We had to change some glass to make it toughened, which was perfectly reasonable.
Good luck, it’s a headache you don’t need but council will have seen it before and should be sympathetic.