No Building Regulations for Ensuite

[h0601]

Hi Everyone

I am in the process of buying my first house which has had a room divided into two by a partition wall (both rooms have windows) and a small ensuite fitted in the master bedroom (also with window)

I put an enquiry in with the sellers solicitor regarding whether Building Regs approval was obtained. The response was that the owner does not have regulation approval as she purchased it as it is currently (i.e the work was done by the owner before her pre 2000).

Where do I stand with this? Should I be requesting that the current owner seek retrospective building regs? Or is this even necessary over 15 years later? A family member in the building trade says it all seems ok but as a first time buyer I have no idea what I should be doing in this situation and I obviously don't want to be causing unnecessary delays at this latter stage if I don't need to. Nor do I want to have trouble selling later on because of this.

Thanks so much for all of your help in advance.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Yes no worries, buy away. Maybe take your builder friend along for a looksee, run the tap, flush the bog etc.

You could potentially have troubles selling if the next buyers solicitor or the buyer was a complete and utter numpty. If there was a problem with the installation it would have come about already and will have been dealt with.

 

[tony1851]

As above, no worries,

All too often a buyer's dim solicitor worries the buyer by asking for paperwork:

Vendor can't be bothered:

Meanwhile buyer no. 2 moves in with an offer which vendor accepts:

Result: buyer no. 1 looses house, while solicitor charges him for the pleasure.

 

[h0601]

Thank you to both of you for your advice.

You have put my mind at rest.

It did seem a bit silly holding up the sale/potentially jeopardising it for something which has obviously not created any problems up until now. As advised i'll take the builder round to give it a once over and leave it at that.

 

[John Bone C.Build.E]

Hi,
When "unauthorised building work" is found, the owner of the building can if they wish ask the local authority for a "regularisation certificate" - i.e. a late building regulation's "OK".

 

[tony1851]

I imagine the OP has sorted this out by now!