Building regs and building survey recourse

[H F]

As you may have read, we've had some issues with the chimney on our home that I've detailed in a different post. Our roofers came and inspected the chimney today ahead of work and we've unearthed a can of worms.

 

Without getting into specifics, we've got a house/building survey that we paid a lot of money for ahead of purchasing the property from an RICS accredited company. Their report gives a green light to many things in the house, which have now transpired to being anything but in good condition - the chimney and roof to start with - major things.

 

On a different note, we have building reg certificates for other things in the house that we believe have not been completed to code based on the advice of specialist contractors and builders. 

 

Can anyone here suggest a starting point for us to seek recourse against the survey company as well as whoever is responsible for building reg certificates?

 

 

[ProDave]

I think it all hinges on how long ago the poor work was done.

 

Most survey reports are littered with get out clauses like only examined from ground level with binoculars etc so they will no doubt say the defects were not visible.

 

I had to quickly write a report last week on faulty / dangerous electrics in a house that had just been bought.  Up here is you buy a house, you have just 7 days to report any defects that the seller omitted to tell you.  It will be interesting to see if the seller is made to pay for putting the defects right or not.

[joe90]

I have found surveys very lacking in the past, even downright wrong and as @ProDave says they have so many get out clauses as to make recourse very difficult. I would list all the things wrong and send it to them asking fir their response and go from there. Regarding building regs building control may be able to help you there.

[H F]

Thanks guys.

 

Also, do garden rooms/conservatories require planning permissions?

[H F]

7 hours ago, ProDave said:

Up here is you buy a house, you have just 7 days to report any defects that the seller omitted to tell you.

wow. Seven days is nothing, given that you’re basically moving in at the time. That’s virtually no time at all.

[recoveringbuilder]

You also have no claim on anything under£500 apparently, when we sold in 2016 the buyers wanted the fridge freezer, washing machine and dishwasher and I wasn’t too happy about the fact they were all 8 years old and could have broken down at any time however the solicitor said they would have no claim on anything less than £500

[Temp]

9 hours ago, Home Farm said:

Thanks guys.

 

Also, do garden rooms/conservatories require planning permissions?

 

Sometimes.

 

Typically it would count as a rear extension. If less than 4 meters deep (detached house) or 3 meters (semi) it would most likely not need planning permission. However the devil is in the detail. For example if there was already be rear extension or more than  half the original garden was built on PP may be required.

 

If it is heated or they knocked through so it's part of the living room then it might need Building Control Approval. 

 

 

 

 

[bassanclan]

You've basically got no come back against building control as far as I can see.

 

We bought a house with a large single storey extension. When purchasing it our solicitor made sure there was a building control completion certificate.

When we moved in and found no cavity wall insulation nor roof insulation we were told that the council were not liable for failing to ensure it met building regulations, it was the builder who was liable, but as there was no contract between us and the builder there was nothing we could do about it!

[andyscotland]

On 18/12/2019 at 14:24, Home Farm said:

Can anyone here suggest a starting point for us to seek recourse against the survey company

 

We had similar issues with our survey when we bought. After working through it with both our own solicitor and the firm appointed by our home insurance legal cover it turns out to be very difficult indeed to pursue any recourse for this.

 

As well as the caveats others have mentioned, even if it is something they should have spotted you will not get anything if it's just a mistake. You would have to prove it was negligent - a mistake no reasonable person could have made if they were taking reasonable care. To do this you'd have to pay another surveyor for expert evidence that it was a negligent mistake. There's a fairly high bar for this - surveyors have a vested interest in making sure most mistakes are not negligent, in case any of their own come back to bite them. And of course if the defending surveyor can find an independent expert of their own willing to say "yeah, I can totally see how they missed that in the circumstances, I'm sure I've made similar mistakes" you will be bogged down in court trying to prove your expert is more believable than theirs. The cost of the case will therefore often far outweigh the potential damages, which makes it unlikely an insurer will cover it.

 

More importantly, you have to pay your expert upfront to get their opinion on whether you can win. And an insurer won't pay for advice until they know the case is winnable. My legal insurer's solicitor told me that chicken-and-egg problem meant that although on paper the policy covers negligence claims, in practice they hardly ever take them. They're only interested if the mistake is jaw-droppingly-obviously-negligent (the house doesn't actually exist, or more usually the surgeon left the scissors inside the patient).

 

If you have legal cover it's worth an ask, and if you have a tame solicitor of your own you could always try writing a letter to the surveyor demanding some compensation. Apparently below a certain level the surveyor's insurer will often take over the case and just settle straight away to avoid the cost of looking into it at their end. But if they refuse (as ours did) you don't have a lot of options.

 

On 18/12/2019 at 14:24, Home Farm said:

as well as whoever is responsible for building reg certificates?

 

I'd be careful here. My understanding is the legal responsibility is with the person who commissioned/did the work. They have to make a declaration at the end that it's all compliant. Building Control may do some inspections to check that, and may refuse to accept the declaration if they find anything problematic. But I don't think that shifts the responsibility to them if they don't find anything.

 

You could try and go after them if their mistake was negligent - but I suspect building control would argue a) they didn't owe you a duty of care, as you had no interest in the property at the time and b) your loss really stemmed from the fact somebody did non-compliant work rather than from Building Control not spotting it. Either of those arguments, if successful, would win them the case. Unfortunately they don't even have to prove the person that did the work was wholly responsible for your loss, they just have to prove they contributed. Liability for negligence can't be apportioned between people, so if there are two parties involved each of them only has to prove the other was partly responsible and that gets them both off the hook.

 

However, building control do have the power to force you - as current owner of the property - to put right recent work that they discover is not compliant. I guess they probably wouldn't if it was minor (and/or not a safety thing), and they would potentially be a bit flexible if they knew you were trying to address a situation you inherited.

 

But there is probably a risk that if you highlight that your house doesn't comply with regulations, and has an invalid completion certificate, you may open a can of worms that you'd prefer to leave closed.

 

Again this might be an area where it's worth taking specialist advice if the mistakes are severe, but I'd definitely keep that conversation well away from the council till you know where you stand. You might possibly be able to go after the person that submitted the completion declaration if that was outright fraudulent, but again there might be issues in proving that you suffered a loss as a direct result of that.

 

If I'd known when we bought our place what I've learned since, I'd have ignored the survey completely and spent a day here with my tools before we concluded contracts... For all the reassurance things like surveys and building control are meant to provide, it seems it's really still very much a case of caveat emptor if things go wrong.

[H F]

On 19/12/2019 at 09:51, bassanclan said:

You've basically got no come back against building control as far as I can see.

 

We bought a house with a large single storey extension. When purchasing it our solicitor made sure there was a building control completion certificate.

When we moved in and found no cavity wall insulation nor roof insulation we were told that the council were not liable for failing to ensure it met building regulations, it was the builder who was liable, but as there was no contract between us and the builder there was nothing we could do about it!

 

 

That's shocking really.

 

As we've delved into the paperwork, it looks like building regs are fine - it was the previous vendors that were lying.

[H F]

On 19/12/2019 at 00:09, Temp said:

If it is heated or they knocked through so it's part of the living room then it might need Building Control Approval. 

We have two rads in there, and there are two doors that lead into it from the main house. Nothing has been broken through so not part of the living space. 

[andyscotland]

3 hours ago, Home Farm said:

That's shocking really.

 

As we've delved into the paperwork, it looks like building regs are fine - it was the previous vendors that were lying.

 

That might help - you could potentially pursue them for deception. However if it could be argued they didn't understand what they were saying it might be hard to prove they did it deliberately.

 

That was the situation we found ourselves in. Ours originally put on the form that they hadn't done any alterations so didn't have any building control paperwork, and later claimed they hadn't realised a garage conversion counted as an alteration because their builder had told them it didn't need building control approval.

 

The vendor's solicitor said it was the surveyor's job to check the info the vendor provided so it should be them responsible (I was tempted to agree, if we could trust vendors to provide all the right info we wouldn't bother paying surveyors at all!). Meanwhile the surveyors said that they couldn't be held responsible for checking things the vendor hadn't declared. And that was when  my solicitor explained that essentially gave both of them a watertight defence, because really they were both responsible but that's not actionable in law.

[H F]

Yikes. Crazy. Loads of expensive processes and systems, and no real recourse avenues. It’s madness.

 

In our case, the vendors were fully aware of what they were doing because they were seasoned house flippers having done it for three decades. So I suspect they knew exactly what they could “push through” with a bit of strategic misrepresentation. It’s useful knowing how to fiddle the system.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Home Farm

[Ferdinand]

>Without getting into specifics, we've got a house/building survey that we paid a lot of money for ahead of purchasing the property from an RICS accredited company. Their >report gives a green light to many things in the house, which have now transpired to being anything but in good condition - the chimney and roof to start with - major things.

 

If there a route through the RICS organisation?

 

I am  more encouraging of Full Structural Surveys than I used to be - including as a way of identifying problems with your own house.

 

We used one to identifying work requiring to be done with our own house, and as a way of providing a comfort blanket to reduce risk for the potential purchaser - as it was a bruiser of a listed building.

 

Ferdinand

[Simplysimon]

all you have to do is look at the new QE hospital in glasgow, the new childrens hospital in edinburgh and DG1 in dumfries. won't have anything to do with the gov'ment though?

[Temp]

22 hours ago, Home Farm said:

We have two rads in there, and there are two doors that lead into it from the main house. Nothing has been broken through so not part of the living space. 

 

 

https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/10/conservatories/3

 

...conservatories are normally exempt from building regulations when:

• They are built at ground level and are less than 30 square metres in floor area.
• The conservatory is separated from the house by external quality walls, doors or windows.
• There should be an independent heating system with separate temperature and on/off controls.
• Glazing and any fixed electrical installations comply with the applicable building regulations requirements (see below).

So possibly a minor infringement if they don't have controls. I'm not sure if thermostatic radiator valves are sufficient or not.

[joth]

That independent heating system requirement must have been around a while as we were warned our house was in violation of it when we bought in 2005.

 

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, joth said:

That independent heating system requirement must have been around a while as we were warned our house was in violation of it when we bought in 2005.

 

 

The way I did mine was just to put two isolator valves in the water circuit, and make sure the extra Rad was on its own loop.

 

Which may or may not be officially good enough.

 

But since I did not ask anyone about anything at all, no one complained.

 

F

Edited December 21, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

Is it me  or have we crossed into the conservatory thread?

[H F]

13 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Is it me  or have we crossed into the conservatory thread?

We have, but it’s very interesting.

 

16 hours ago, joth said:

That independent heating system requirement must have been around a while as we were warned our house was in violation of it when we bought in 2005.

 

Joth, who warned you the house was in violation.

 

In our case, should the building survey have picked this up and warned us?

[joth]

1 hour ago, Home Farm said:

Joth, who warned you the house was in violation

I'm struggling to remember. I think we actually figured it out for ourselves as we were looking to replace or extend over it and researched the permitted development rules on it.

We never got around to changing it at all; sold on that house last year and again no question was raised about the heating system in the conservatory. The buyer didn't seem to have a survey done at all (she was downsizing and in a massive rush to complete before the first Brexit deadline), the buyer's solicitor did ask about the age of the conservatory we said it predated us, at least 20 years, which I think was enough for them to figure it's compliance to BRs was very low risk.

 

By coincidence my wife now works for the conveyancer that handled that sale for us and thinks they'd pick this sort of thing up when representing the buyer, if the conservatory/alteration is "recent". They'd ask for the seller to confirm it was done under permitted development, request any certificate for the same, and/or arrange indemnity insurance if any issues come up. 

Edited December 22, 2019 by joth

[H F]

Very interesting. I’ll enquire why our solicitors never requested paperwork/permissions for the conservatory.