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Should I get a regularisation certificate ?


johndes

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Hi, would be grateful for your views on below. I am in the process of selling my house and the solicitor requires a building control certificate for the work I did to my garage. I built my house in 1987 with an integral garage. The garage was not exempt from building regulations and so therefore the fabric of the garage matched the fabric of the rest of the house. ie the floor, walls and roof  to the property are all of the same specification and were inspected by building control at the time of build. In 1990 . There was access to the garage from inside the house. In 1990 i decided to take out the garage door and build a wall and insert a window into the opening were the garage door was and plaster the walls. I also raised the floor to match the height in the rest of the property and began using the room as a bedroom.I believe that as the fabric of the garage was approved when the house was built any work I did after was not a conversion but an improvement of the space. The trouble is it was not a requirement for a building control completion certificate to be issued when the house was built. !. Should I spend £400 for the Local building control to come out and issue a certificate for something I dont need !. Or do I !

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A garage would not require insulation, a bedroom would. So just plastering the walls would not necessarily comply with building regulations. I am sure you should have informed building control and had the work (addition if insulation etc) verified.

 

Can your solicitor cover this with an indemnity policy, ask that question BEFORE you speak to the council as doing so may make it invalid.

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In 1987 when i built the house there was no requirement to have any insulation in any cavity walls, No requirement to have insulation in any ground floor and i believe a minimum of 100mm of loft insulation to the house. So the house and integral garage satisfied the building reg requirements of the day in 1987. In 1990 when I infilled the garage door  the same building regs requirements were in place. So I believe even though I did not get building control out to inspect the 1990 work it already had the build regs requirements from 1987 and i dont need a certificate !

 

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Hi, thank you for your replies. My next door neighbour was actually the head of building control at the time of the build. He has now retired. His advice to me was as the garage was not exempt from building control it met the requirements for building regs the same as any room on the ground floor. The fact that i chose to call it a garage was my choice and i could have called it a bedroom albeit with a garage door in place !. So it was therefore not a conversion or change of use !. Your thoughts would be most welcome !

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I think the key here is the date when you converted the garage to a habitable space, amongst other things.  When first built the garage wouldn't have been a habitable space, so would not have been required to comply with the building regulations that then applied to habitable rooms.  On the date when it was converted it would have been required to have been in compliance with the habitable room requirements in the building regs in force on that date. 

 

If, for example, the building regs that applied at the date of conversion required higher standards of insulation, then you would have had to make that room comply.  Similarly, there would be a requirement for a means of escape from fire to be included at the time of conversion, as all habitable rooms need this.  The same goes for the electrical installation and accessibility part of building regs; if the conversion was after the introduction of Part P then the conversion would have needed sign off on this as well.

 

I think you will need to get retrospective building regs approval for the conversion, I'm afraid, Just because the regulations that apply to a habitable room have always been different to those that apply to an integral garage.

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Hi, thank you for your reply, The house and integral garage was built in 1987 with the garage space being used as a bedroom in 1990. The same building regulations applied at the same time as both were carried out. At this period there was no requirement for insulation under the ground floor to the house in any part. There was no requirement for insulation to the cavity wall in any part of the house. A minimum  of 100mm of loft insulation was required for the loft area.My neighbour was the head of building control for this area at the time and he says that as the garage is integral and part of the building envelope it was not exempt from building regs at the time.so the garage part of the house was built to the same requirements as the rest of the habitable house. Electrical lights and sockets were installed at the build stage.So how would it not be classed as a habitable space ?. Would be grateful to hear your thoughts

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The key is, in part, the date of the conversion.  Regs have changed a great deal in the past 15 years or so, so  conversion undertaken some time after the original build will need to show that it complied not with the original regulations at the time the house was built, but those that applied at the date of conversion.

 

Examples would be the Part M changes that altered the minimum acceptable height of wall sockets and set the maximum height of wall switches.  Other compliance issuse would be means of escape in the even of fire.  That is a regulation that doesn't apply to a garage, but does to a habitable room.

 

If you can prove that the conversion too place in 1990, with evidence that will satisfy the solicitor for the purchaser, then the only building regs requirement that I think you need to prove compliance with is the fire regs, specifically the means of escape.  Is the window a regulation size escape window, with the lower edge of the specified minimum escape pane no higher than 1100mm above the floor?  Is there another safe means of escape directly, via a single door, either the outside or to a communal area with a single fire exit door?

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57 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

If you can prove that the conversion too place in 1990, with evidence that will satisfy the solicitor for the purchaser, then the only building regs requirement that I think you need to prove compliance with is the fire regs, specifically the means of escape.

...and maybe ventilation, sound proofing, and weather-proofing and insulation of the in-fill wall?

 

On 21/10/2018 at 21:29, johndes said:

I believe that as the fabric of the garage was approved when the house was built ...

Approved yes, but approved  as a garage, not a habitable room.

 

Just playing devils advocate here but, in 2018, I feel sure you'd need a BC application for converting an integral garage. Whether that was the case in 1990 is the crux of the matter.  If I was your buyer I'd want a piece of paper to demonstrate compliance, but others may not worry about it...

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In 1990 there would have been no specific ventilation requirement, an opening window would have been OK.  Same goes for sound insulation, and the integral garage would have had a ceiling to the remainder of the house (as a garage) that exceeded the requirement for a habitable room.  Wall insulation wasn't a requirement in 1990 either, the cavity wall built 3 years earlier when the house was built would meet the regs.

 

I'm pretty sure that the only elements that would need approval would be the fabric of the wall blocking off the old garage door (cavity wall as per the rest of the building would be required) and the means of escape from fire (an approved fire escape window with a low threshold to the floor internally, or an alternative escape route that doesn't involved going via another habitable space).

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