What do I do if work was done without building regulations approval?

Nobody notices a missing completion certificate at the time. It surfaces years later, when a buyer's solicitor sends a standard enquiry and the answer is that nobody knows. By then the builder has gone, the work is buried, and the options are narrower than they were. Working through them in order is what keeps a sale alive.

Safety

Step by step

1. Establish exactly what work was done and when.Invoices, photographs, dates, the trade's details, and any partial paperwork. Whether the work is recent or decades old changes which route makes sense.
2. Check whether it was actually notifiable.Some work genuinely is exempt, and some was exempt under the rules at the time. If it turns out no approval was needed, you have a much simpler letter to write to a solicitor.
3. Deal with safety before paperwork.For electrical work, an electrical installation condition report from a registered electrician. For gas, an inspection by a Gas Safe registered engineer. For anything structural, a structural engineer's opinion. These cost far less than the alternative and they answer the question that matters most.
4. Consider a regularisation application.In England and Wales, a retrospective application to the council for unauthorised work, usually requiring some opening up so the work can be seen, and producing a regularisation certificate if it complies. It is the route that produces a real document.
5. Check whether a scheme route exists.For some work — electrical in particular — a registered installer can inspect, test and, where it complies, arrange for it to be certified retrospectively. It is not available for everything, but it is quicker than regularisation where it is.
6. Understand what indemnity insurance actually does.It insures against the council taking enforcement action. It says nothing about whether the work is compliant or safe, and it is usually void if anyone approaches the council about the work — which is why you take advice on sequence before writing to anyone.
7. Get the sequence right if you are selling.Approaching the council can remove the indemnity option; taking the indemnity option removes the chance of a certificate. Ask your conveyancer which the buyer's lender will accept before doing either.
8. Fix and document what you can either way.Even where the formal route is closed, an electrical condition report, a gas safety record and an engineer's letter give a buyer real reassurance and cost very little.

Tips

• There is a time limit on the council prosecuting for a contravention of the building regulations, but enforcement powers to require alteration or removal can run longer, and neither makes the work compliant. Take advice rather than relying on elapsed time.
• If you are buying, an indemnity policy offered instead of a certificate is a prompt to get your own survey to look specifically at that work, not a reason to relax.
• Regularisation often requires opening up. Budget for the making good as well as the fee.

Common mistakes

• Ringing the council to ask about the work before taking advice — It can extinguish the indemnity insurance option permanently, and that is sometimes the route the buyer's lender would have accepted.
• Treating an indemnity policy as a fix — It transfers a specific financial risk. The work remains uncertified, and the next seller faces the same conversation with a smaller set of options.

Questions people ask