davejura Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 Hi folks. We have our warrant application in and BC have got back to us to say that our build cost estimate is too low. We half expected this as I have heard this is usual for them, but not adding an extra £115k on as their estimate! Basically that will cost us over £500 more for the warrant. Has anyone had any success negotiating the fee with BC? Or will they refund a proportion if you can prove that the build cost was a lot less than their estimate? I know our council are cash strapped, but this seems to be taking the proverbial!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamieled Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 I think (but am happy to be proved wrong) that they use standard building costs per m2 for the warrant. There are a few discounts if you get certain bits externally certified but they don't add up to much. I too expect to complete for less than the build cost indexed by BC. They will not give you a refund later. Think of it this way - the cost to them is not related to the cost of your build, they just use a per m2 cost as the fairest way of figuring out how much to charge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 What size of build and what building cost did you think it would be? Our building warrant was done by the architectural technician who put together all the drawings and technical information and set the build cost estimate, which they believed, but I would have to dig up the paperwork to see what that estimate was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davejura Posted December 4, 2019 Author Share Posted December 4, 2019 We are approx 150 sq M and I put in £150,000 as build cost. Planning on doing a lot of the work myself. They are basing their estimate on £1800 sq m! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thedreamer Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 The impression I had was that the building warrant fee m2 is calculated on market prices, rather than what you can achieve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamieled Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 22 minutes ago, davejura said: We are approx 150 sq M and I put in £150,000 as build cost. Planning on doing a lot of the work myself. They are basing their estimate on £1800 sq m! If you paid a main contractor double your estimate for the exact same turnkey house, do you think building control would have double the work? It may be possible to use a QS or similar to provide a professional estimate that they would accept, but it would wipe out any warrant savings. It's difficult to prove the end cost at the beginning and if BC didn't take a standard approach every man and their dog would be trying to claim they were going to build really cheaply simply to reduce their warrant fee! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 Wow living in England I’d never heard of this Seems a very unfair system LA BC works out very cheap here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpmiller Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 Once you go over a certain size/ value, NI LABC work it out the same way. They came back to me in the same manner so I just sent in a single-page estimate for the various different broad items (denoting those that we already had firm quotes for) and pointing out that a hands-on selfbuild obviously had considerable savings in trades labour. Accepted without further discussion... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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