First time buyer - Load baring wall removed , no building regulations approval

sanaxe1

sanaxe1

sanaxe1

Permabanned
Joined
7 Nov 2006
Posts
6,136
Location
Nottingham
Hello, so I am buying my first house and my solicitor has emailed me stating that a load baring wall between the kitchen and the dining room of the property I am looking to purchase has been removed without getting building regulations approval. ( No certificate ). The seller offered an indemnity but my solicitor says they aren't really worth the paper they are written on and that I should ask the seller to contact my local authority to come out and inspect the work and then issue a certificate. ( If they are still doing it due to Covid-19)

Is this a routine thing or are they going to take the house apart to see the beams etc? I take it the seller will pay for this and putting the kitchen back to its original state ? Does anyone know what affect this will have on house insurance / morgage.

Any information or advice would be great on how I proceed.
 
sanaxe1 said:
my solicitor has emailed me stating that a load baring wall between the kitchen and the dining room of the property I am looking to purchase has been removed without getting building regulations approval.
Click to expand...

If in any doubt, walk away. And thank your solicitor for doing a good job.
 
sanaxe1 said:
Hello, so I am buying my first house and my solicitor has emailed me stating that a load baring wall between the kitchen and the dining room of the property I am looking to purchase has been removed without getting building regulations approval. ( No certificate ). The seller offered an indemnity but my solicitor says they aren't really worth the paper they are written on and that I should ask the seller to contact my local authority to come out and inspect the work and then issue a certificate. ( If they are still doing it due to Covid-19)

Is this a routine thing or are they going to take the house apart to see the beams etc? I take it the seller will pay for this and putting the kitchen back to its original state ? Does anyone know what affect this will have on house insurance / morgage.

Any information or advice would be great on how I proceed.
Click to expand...

I had this exact same thing and after a bit of too and fro between me and the seller they eventually got the LA to come out and give retrospective approval. It cost them a couple of hundred quid total to get the sign off. They had to remove some plaster to check that the correct beam was in place to support everything else and they had to get that replastered and left it for me to paint. If you're this far along the seller should just plump up rather than risk you pull out.
 
How did the solicitor discover this? Wouldn't that be for the building survey to flag up issues like this?

I'm assuming the solicitor compared floor plans of the property and realised no building certificate on file?
 
norm said:
How did the solicitor discover this? Wouldn't that be for the building survey to flag up issues like this?

I'm assuming the solicitor compared floor plans of the property and realised no building certificate on file?
Click to expand...

no, a survey would state that alterations have been made and would recommend further investigation of this sort. It would not ascertain as to whether the works had been carried out to an appropriate standard as this would involve opening up of the structure.

The solicitor would have been notified of the works either via the owners of the property, a search or the surveyor.
If it was done decades ago then no enforcement is possible anyway so retrospective consent would be pointless but if it was recent then that’s different
 
How long ago did the vendor remove the wall? Any longer than 10-15 years is probably going to be okay. Any shorter and I wouldn't even consider it without retrospective approval.
 
norm said:
How did the solicitor discover this? Wouldn't that be for the building survey to flag up issues like this?

I'm assuming the solicitor compared floor plans of the property and realised no building certificate on file?
Click to expand...

I think one of the questions on the TA6 form is to do with structural changes. If the vendor said yes, and there's no approval on record then it gets flagged.
 
fastwunz said:
no, a survey would state that alterations have been made and would recommend further investigation of this sort. It would not ascertain as to whether the works had been carried out to an appropriate standard as this would involve opening up of the structure.

Semple said:
How long ago did the vendor remove the wall? Any longer than 10-15 years is probably going to be okay. Any shorter and I wouldn't even consider it without retrospective approval.
Click to expand...

The solicitor would have been notified of the works either via the owners of the property, a search or the surveyor.
If it was done decades ago then no enforcement is possible anyway so retrospective consent would be pointless but if it was recent then that’s different
Click to expand...

I believe the solicitors sent them a questionnaire asking about any works done to the house . They stated this work has been done and then the solicitors asked for the certificate which they didn't have. The work has been done within the last 4 years as that is how long they have lived there.
 
sanaxe1 said:
I believe the solicitors sent them a questionnaire asking about any works done to the house . They stated this work has been done and then the solicitors asked for the certificate which they didn't have. The work has been done within the last 4 years as that is how long they have lived there.
Click to expand...

if they got zero building regs approval for works done 4 years ago then they are either trying to pull the wool over your eyes, are stupid, possibly unwittingly mislead or a combination of these. Regardless, that’s too recent in my book. They need to provide you with retrospective consent
 
Yup, retrospective consent is the solution here.

Could be that a builder fobbed them off. It's not evident to many people that this sort of work needs Building Control approval.
 
my 10p worth as somone who has to deal with the sharp end of this stuff:

if in doubt
1) walk away
2) walk away
3) walk away.
4) don't look back.

Why?

Your solicitor is on the money about indemnity not being worth the paper it's written on. When I last looked into it in detail it only covers claims resulting from building control issuing a dangerous building notice (very rare event) and only in cases when they do so off their own bat, no prior prompting or contact from yourself. Even more unlikely. This will keep coming up in future if you try and sell - and the insurance is usually only offered for a finite time and non-transferable capacity. It absolutely does not cover you say if you wanted to do some other alterations, submit some designs and the vigilant checking engineer notices a problem elsewhere and says to you "hey that's not up to regs and you need to improve it." Building control WILL require you to do so. Building control almost certainly WILL NOT issue a dangerous building notice against you. You will be the one who ends up paying to put it right out of your own pocket.

Retrospective approval is an option however to obtain this without proper plans (and you would know by now if they had them as the solicitor will have checked) which let's face it there won't be as a cowboy has cut corners (the lack of building regs speaks for itself) will require intrusive opening-up (removal of all finishes) to expose the beams that will hopefully be there, and confirm the members and loadpaths going onto them. Then someone (a professional engineer) will need to do some calcs to modern codes to justify the adequacy of those beams to building control's satisfaction. Now this all assumes they are able to justify them! 4 years is not long enough to apply the rule of "stood there long enough, she'll be right". 20 years maybe. Anything less than that is firmly still in the "cack can happen and might do tomorrow". I've seen it first hand.

Are you happy waiting for the approval process - and happy with the smashing about it will require? Will the seller absorb all the cost (all the builders and engineers fees + redecoration + council fees) and will they redecorate it to a proper standard (doubtful). What if they uncover a problem? How long are you willing to wait for them to put it right? Will they actually do so - or rather given track record thus far would you trust them to do so? That pretty house you saw becomes a building site for a month or two and will it be left nice and clean for you?

I bought my place with an extension with no building regs thinking it looked ok and how bad can it be etc (this had stood for 20 years). Everything I have learned about it since... I wish I'd walked away. Money pit. Absolute money pit. Still unpicking all the rubbish with it 5 years on!

Now if they produce retrospective regs quickly - and it's legit (always check directly with the council, explain you are buying it, if they won't talk to you a solicitor's call usually suffices coupled with a letter of consent from the existing owner) then quids in. But if it all drags out and continues to smell fishy... walk away.

edit: why the caution? Spine walls (as they're commonly referred to) not only carry load vertically but often are required to contribute to lateral stabililty of a property. Their removal by well meaning builders not thinking holistically can, even with a meaty beam overhead, leave the building with inadequate stability side-side which slowly, progressively moves around. You sometimes get away with it in a terrace if enough houses still have the spine walls in, but then it's a bit of a lottery as to who else does modifications and when. But at some point the chickens usually come home to roost so to speak.
 
Last edited:
@sanaxe1 i notice your details say Nottingham. Is the house in that area? PM me if you get to the point of needing a structural engineer to review things for you. I know a good one in Nottingham and will happily put you both in touch.
 
The whole “indemnity” situation really annoys me when it comes to house sales. We had this with electrical and gas work on our current house and the estate agent was trying to push us into accepting an indemnity policy to move the chain on.

An indemnity policy won’t help us if the house sets on fire or falls down because of dodgy work that’s been done!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom