Fraudulent sign off, who's liable

I've re-read the original question:

phills1 said:

the water company has confirmed even in 1994 the house would have been in breach of building regulations and would have never have been signed off legally. The house builder has since been bought out twice. The public pipes were in place long before the houses were built in 1994

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So did or didn't your house get signed off by building control back in 1994?
BCO had 12 months to bring an action. If they didn't bring an action, they could seek a court injunction preventing the house from being occupied. There is no time limit for this, but as far as I can see - no BCO has ever done this.

Would I be right in believing we have rights to claim damages for this, against the present parent company

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Correct - subject to http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/58/contents
so probably not*.

and they are responsible for moving it to bringing into regulations. As far as I can tell documentation has been forged, regulations ignored and bribes paid as due to the size of these pipes the min clearance either side that is needed at least 3m. The house foundation footings go down deeper than the paperwork the council hold.

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Are the water company telling you they are taking legal action? Are they making you a party to that action?

*unless you can show fraud

@Phils1 - you need to focus effort on what is acceptable to the water company and ignore any conversation about the illegality or otherwise of your original build. Unless they are seeking some legal action to demolish your house - its done and dusted.

They want us to pay twice for the sewer diversions, so we fund all costs of moving two public sewers off our land one, pay all legal fees, compo to the council as it's been re-laid on their land where all other public services run. We then have to give Anglian the same ammount of money again totalling the costs of the diversion works, even though we are paying for it and not them, that they hold for a year before returning 80% of it and then the final 20% when they say. So before you can do anything, you are paying Anglain twice, very one sided.

Oh dear that sounds frightening, how much is their quote? You need proper legal advice, I thought it was just the extension not the existing house.
You might be better to get the local papers involved and they might back down.
I hope you can sort this as it sounds like nothing to do with your actions.

Drawings been done, then I can obtain quote from Civil engineers to do it, it's one of Anglian's 'approved contractors' but they are private companies. You can have your own builder, but they have to jump through so much to be allowed to work on it, paperwork and red tape.

these costs are associated with the extension not the original house ?

When you set out on a claim you have to work out who/what you are claiming against and the likelihood of success.

A claim here against the developer will run into the problem of the changed ownership. That doesn't necessarily make it impossible but it will certainly make it much more difficult and it dramatically increases the chance of reaching a dead end. Possibly a very expensive dead end! It may also run into the limitations act although the time limit for claims does not start until the facts are reasonably known. If you can show the facts could not have been known until now you may have a chance.

A claim against building control will run into the difficulty that knowledge of nearby drains, not related to the site, is not necessarily a building control responsibility. Not going to be an easy one!

You might have a claim against you designer for letting you get this far without establishing the situation with nearby drains. As a designer/surveyor it is number one on my terms and conditions. I tell every single client they must get the drains sorted before they do anything else, because if they cannot get permission to build near/over then money spent on planning and everything else is wasted.