Retrospective Building Warrant

[DuckieDuckie]

Do I need one?

Victorian 2 story house, upper flat (converted yonks ago).

We decided to turn an internal window between a bedroom and a box room into a door to create a storage room off a bedroom. We blocked up the original doorway with a stud wall (but not 12mm plasterboard, used the small 'handiboards' as could fit them in the car).

We had a number of 'joiners' over to view the job pre-work to get quotes and none of them considered it neccessary to inform the authorities as it was a fairly straightforward enlargement of an opening in an internal non-loadbearing wall. After some thought, we enlisted the help of my dad (who back in the 'good old days' renovated our family home himself, rewiring and all-he's handy, but not a professional) to enlarge the opening ourselves and put in the door (a 'standard' pine panelled number from B&Q).

Loved having a 'walk in wardrobe' and didn't think anything more of it.

Until that is we come to sell our flat. Seems this work MAY require a building warrant.

Had the home survey, the surveyor actually overlooked the door until the OH mentioned that we'd put it in... suddenly we have it on the survey and we're going to need to get paperwork, I think. Starting to do research and coming up with things like 'implications for fire escape' etc which is certainly not something that we thought about...

Does this sound like a retrospective building warrant is needed? How would we go about obtaining one with the least upset (OH is getting extremely anxious over the whole thing).

Wish we'd got a proper bloke in to do it now... learned a lesson!!!

Thanks a lot in advance for any advice/suggestions (don't need any more 'tellings off' though! I suspect I'll get a shed load more from the planning dept...!)

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

When was the work done? Your regs are different to ours but not sure about the finite differences

Doesn't sound very clear what you've done tbh, though sounds like you effectively created a room (wardrobe) off a bedroom? Where before there was a box room accessed elsewhere of which the original opening you infilled with 'handiboards', what ever they are? Conti board?

Anyway it should have been a layer of plasterboard each side though arguable whether certification was really required or not.

The simplest solution, assuming your buyer even gives a damn, is to get an indemnity insurance for about £60. Your solicitor can sort this out and should have suggested it. Don't speak with your Local Authority about it as that will prevent an indemnity being taken out, assuming its the same as England.

 

[DuckieDuckie]

work was done 2 years ago.

Basically we bought the flat as a '3 bed' property but the third 'bedroom' was a 9x6ft room in between the dining room and the main bedroom, situated smack bang in the middle of the flat, doorway onto the hall but with no external windows, only internal windows into the dining room and the bedroom (no idea when that set-up was put in). Needless to say we never considered it a bedroom, it's a storage room or a study at best. So we opened up the window into the bedroom to create a doorway and closed off the door to the hall.

Basically we never considered it a habitable room but rather a storage room (which I believe would concur with the opinions of the planning/building dept due to the internal windows) plus we removed one of the glass windows which was most definitely no where near safety glass.

The 'handiboards' are regular gyproc plasterboards, but smaller dimensions (3ftx5ft or so) but without the 12mm thickness. The partition we built to close off the original door has got it on both sides.

Indemnity insurance seems like it would cover us (it's a really minor bit of work, it's frustrating me that there's potentially so much issue to be kicked up over it). I don't know much about it though, would we take it out for a specific piece of work or does it cover the whole flat? Does the buyer then have to take out the indemnity themselves?

We're looking at first time buyers as the market for our property. This could work in our favour (not experienced) or it could work against us (extra fussy).

Starting to wish we could turn back the clocks and re-do... or rather tape up the OHs mouth when the surveyor was around!!!