Sign off

[newhome]

1 hour ago, lizzie said:

Do you have to have all your garden landscaping done to get a completion certificate?  I am in England, the house is pretty much finished just need MVHR commission etc which is being done immediately after Easter, all kitchens bathroom etc in and working.  I will have a base surface drive awaiting final resin when I get the loot later in the year but  until then it will be a binder course, some new estates live with that for months before final blacktop goes on. I was hoping to get signed off mid April with things done to this stage.  It this doable or have I got to have everything outside finished too?

 

Think I will shoot myself if that is the case!

 

I dont plan to put the garage door on for a month or so as I want the walls next to it rendered and will wait for particular renderer to be available.  I will have concrete slabs ready for patio tiles and tiles there waiting to go down but tiler can't do until about July, garden will be topsoil and grass seed. Areas that need timber fencing will be done when I have decided on style and height when I finalise garden design plan meantime I will keep heras there for about a month.

 

Help anyone?

 

 

 

My BCO didn't give a stuff about the actual garden but then none of that was prescribed in the planning permission. As far as outside bits were concerned he was interested in the disabled access and the other entrances to the house, and he insisted we put up a proper fence bordering one side of the house as there was a drop. We had a temporary fence (sheep netting) in place but he demanded something more substantial (we had intended to replace the fence with a wooden one eventually anyway). Other than that he wasn't bothered. I had the BCO round before I filled out the completion application. I asked if someone would come and help me understand what was still required to achieve sign off and they were happy to come out and let me know. It meant that I had a full list of things that I knew had to be worked on before I got as far as the completion stage, so my expectations weren't dashed when I thought it was complete only to find that there were things that I hadn't even considered that still needed to be done. If you're approaching being ready it might be worth you asking if someone will come out and have a look for you. 

 

 

 

[newhome]

8 minutes ago, TerryE said:

AFAIK, you can't reclaim VAT on work executed after you have received the completion certificate.   In our case the LPA insisted that we include planting plans, restoring road frontage, etc. in our conditions.  At the time, I thought that this was a bureaucratic PITA, but I later realised that by bringing all of this stuff within the scope of the application, they were actually doing us a favour: this work comes within the scope of the development and is therefore reclaimable. 

 

Driveways, electric gates, landscaping ... can easily end up costing more than £20K, so delaying sign-off might well be worth while if you can avoid VAT on this.

 

I've read 2 different interpretations on that here; one being that you can't claim for anything purchased after the date on the completion certificate and the other being that you can as long as it's before you send the claim off (ie within the 3 month period since completion). That said if @lizzie has bought all of the materials needed to complete her project I imagine she can just claim for those as who is going to know whether they have actually been fitted or not? I have tiles still to be fitted here. The vast majority have been fitted but there are still a few to complete. I have however included the entire tile invoice within my claim. 

 

[TerryE]

Good (relating to the scope of the development) purchased before the sign-off date for the purposes of completing the development clearly fall within VAT reclaim category. 

 

My pint is that we were very much cash constrained towards the end of our build, so we deferred any non-essential expenditure until we had sold the old house and moved into the new one.  That being said, the deferred stuff was not trivial: glass doors on en-suites, fitted cupboard doors, all of the external landscaping works.  Delaying BCO sign-off after this has save us maybe £4K so far. 

[lizzie]

I have materials sorted and deposits paid on gate and garage door ex vat.  Our planning was very odd and and non specific as to materials other than roof covering.  Nothing at all about garden.

[newhome]

2 hours ago, lizzie said:

I have materials sorted and deposits paid on gate and garage door ex vat.  Our planning was very odd and and non specific as to materials other than roof covering.  Nothing at all about garden.

 

Mine too. Just something about getting the roof tiles and the colour of the render agreed by the planning department. 

 

[Plumbersmateuk]

8 hours ago, newhome said:

I've read 2 different interpretations on that here; one being that you can't claim for anything purchased after the date on the completion certificate and the other being that you can as long as it's before you send the claim off (ie within the 3 month period since completion).

Same here

8 hours ago, newhome said:

In our case the LPA insisted that we include planting plans, restoring road frontage, etc. in our conditions.  At the time, I thought that this was a bureaucratic PITA, but I later realised that by bringing all of this stuff within the scope of the application, they were actually doing us a favour: this work comes within the scope of the development and is therefore reclaimable. 

Again same for me apart from I didn't think it was PITA, I immediately thought of the VAT reclaim

[Gone West]

Our BCO wasn't interested in what was in the planning approval. He signed it off even though we didn't have a level access from the drive to the path leading to the front door. He was pragmatic about it because we have to demolish the bungalow in order to create the driveway. Some BCOs have more common sense than others.

[newhome]

10 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

Some BCOs have more common sense than others.

 

And ain’t that the truth!