Building Control Company Lost Licence

[Doubies]

Hi all,

I found out from a builder that my Building Control company had lost their licence and were due to cease trading so rang up for a partial completion certificate. No other company will touch it now and say it must go through the local council.

I spoke to the council and they said make sure the partial completion has as much information as possible. So I went back to the company who shouted at me saying the council are being awkward and what they have provided is fine. They then additional detail on visits in a separate email. In conversation with the council they said worst case £500 ish. Then they came back saying what is mentioned in the separate email isn't on the certificate so legally can't be included and so they want to do it all from the beginning and the charge is £1600. I paid this and then immediately regretted doing so without taking some advice first. Anyway, that's where I'm at.

I've had nothing but trouble with builders and have little confidence they have done any of the work correctly, I have been redoing and patching their work (e.g angle iron brackets around the downstairs ceiling as no wall plates are tied into the steels) so it doesn’t look too pretty.

Overall my concern is that they will turn up, see the state of the work (probably many things I haven't even noticed) and then say they are not confident that the work upstairs (which is now finished) has been done correctly and want to start ripping down plaster etc. If that happens the house will never be complete, either because of costs or I'll have a mental breakdown.

A few questions I have

1) Are the council just being awkward not accepting the partial completion and can I appeal this somehow? The partial completion states "Works complete up to and including pre-plaster level".

2) Do I have options to just not get final signoff and buy indemnity insurance in the future if selling? (and where does that land me with the council now that I paid the money?)

3) Referring to question 1, it seems crazy to me that these building control companies are licenced (I presume by the council) to do work. Then when they are being incompetent, the people giving them the licence have no accountability for that companies incorrect signoffs, and even go a step further to make it the customers problem. I would think some insurance at either the government side or companies side would be liable for this?



Thanks for reading

Darren

 

[johnny2007]

The usual problems with private building control.
When would people learn that if a builder refuses to go through the council they're going to bodge everything?
Of course these cowboys prefer private building control: they pay them (i mean, the customer pays them) and they pass anything.
That's until they get busted and close down, leaving people in a mess.
My advice: sack the builder.
Employ a proper builder willing to check and repair/redo bodged parts of the job.
If he's good he won't have any problem going through the council building control.
Inevitably there will be parts to be ripped up, but it's for the best.
Imagine if you find a structural problem 5 years down the line...

 

[^woody^]

It's never ever the builder's choice as to who should or should not inspect their work.

 

[Doubies]

Thanks for the advice so far. I've been through a number of builders, each as bad the last. I'm now stuck trying to make the best of a bad situation myself. I've learnt a lot in my experience renovating this house. Mainly not to bother in the future

 

[^woody^]

The council want as much info from the private inspector just to make their life easier when it comes to them inspecting.

There is time and cost involved which the council can't recoup, so in a commercial sense, the council wants to do as little as possible, as easily as possible.

In reality, the council can just pick it up with minimal info, and do their own initial appraisal and take it from there.

No, you can't ignore things and rely on indemnity. Well you can do what you like really but there are lots of risk involved other than the certification.

 

[Wolfhere]

The private building control company is not licensed by the council. They are licensed by the government and are in competition with the council.

As with council building control some of them are very good and some rubbish and most are somewhere in between.

Taking on a job that has been partly inspected by a company that has lost it's licence is, I would think, a nightmare for all concerned. The council will have to look at everything before it will put it's name to signing the job off.

 

[garyo]

My local authority has just re-insourced its building control services. For a long as i can remember these had been outsourced to agency that was shared between it and two other local authorities. This happened half way through two jobs that I've had ongoing for the last three years, and amazingly it was all pretty seamless, so miracles do happen!