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Urgent advice needed re shower installed without certification
I'm currently trying to sell my house, pay off the mortgage and then buy a house outright with the remainder of the proceeds.
I've accepted an offer and have been busy househunting. However, I've handed my forms in to the solicitor and been hit with a bombshell.
Three years ago, I started on a training course for a new job in London. As it was my intention to return to my home in the north once I had qualified, I decided to let my house out through a letting agent.
Apparently the agents had been having trouble finding a tenant for it at first because it didn't have a shower. But then they informed me that a couple who they regarded as good customers of theirs liked the house and wanted to know if I would be willing to let them install a shower at their own expense. They put it to me that the man was a qualified builder and would do a professional job and that it would add value to the house.
I had my concerns about the standard of the work etc but I felt like I had a gun to my head, especially as my new employers were being tinpot Nazis about not allowing us to use our mobile phones except during breaks during the training course, making it very difficult to manage the situation from 200 miles away.
The "at our own expense" offer then became a "can we have a rent reduction if we install the shower" request. In hindsight, I should have told them to fuck off at this point but, in the circumstances I was in, I made a deal to meet them half-way on this. As it happened, an old back injury recurred during this training course (it was a vocational degree as an NHS professional, so I was treated very much like an employee rather than a student) and for various reasons that I won't go into here, I ended up being slung off the course and at this point unable to return to my own home until the tenants' initial six months had expired. What a mess, eh?
But eventually, I was able to return to my house and the shower installation looked like it had been a competent job. A new circuit and circuit breaker had been added to the fusebox, a pullcord switch was installed in the bathroom etc.
However, I was completely oblivious to the change in building regulations that required that any such work carried out after 1 Jan 2005 needed to have either a certificate by a qualified person or approval from building control.
This has now arisen as an issue because of the conveyancing process and my solicitor wanted to know what certification there was for this work and of course I have nothing to show for it. She has said we could get indemnity insurance to cover the fact that it's non-compliant with building regs (even though I understand that the council could only do something about it one year after the work was done and that time has expired, so the indemnity is a pointless waste of money). The trouble with this, I understand, is that it may not surprisingly alarm the buyer and lead to them pulling out or expecting a price reduction.
I believe the former tenants are still in the area and I should be able to find them. I wonder if it is worth approaching them with a view to rectifying the situation? If he has made a cowboy installation without notifying building control etc, then he'll be in deep doo-doo if I report him, won't he?
I could also try chasing the letting agent. I still have some correspondence about this offer on Gmail. There was also some discussion on the phone about it, which I don't have a record of, but the emails are still evidence that this offer was made - and with the agent's full knowledge. The agent at no time mentioned certification was necessary and they do have a duty of care to keep abreast of relevant legislation, surely?
So I'm also minded to approach this agent direct and demand that they sort this mess out, e.g. by getting their in-house maintenance people to inspect the work, reinstall if necessary and certify it. If they don't, I will report them to the council and to their professional body (ARLA - association of residential letting agents, of which the agent boasts so much about being a member), find my own electrician to do the remedial work and sue them in small claims for the costs.
Or should I just pay through the nose for all this myself like a mug and just put it down to bad experience? This could cost several hundred pounds to put right and it's money I just don't have. I'm actually unemployed at the moment and I'm selling the house to escape a benefits trap (if I take on a temporary job for a few weeks, for example, and then have to sign back on, I end up losing the mortgage interest payments). Selling the house and buying somewhere outright means I'm free to take up whatever work I please without having to worry about mortgage or rent and housing benefit etc.
I've accepted an offer and have been busy househunting. However, I've handed my forms in to the solicitor and been hit with a bombshell.
Three years ago, I started on a training course for a new job in London. As it was my intention to return to my home in the north once I had qualified, I decided to let my house out through a letting agent.
Apparently the agents had been having trouble finding a tenant for it at first because it didn't have a shower. But then they informed me that a couple who they regarded as good customers of theirs liked the house and wanted to know if I would be willing to let them install a shower at their own expense. They put it to me that the man was a qualified builder and would do a professional job and that it would add value to the house.
I had my concerns about the standard of the work etc but I felt like I had a gun to my head, especially as my new employers were being tinpot Nazis about not allowing us to use our mobile phones except during breaks during the training course, making it very difficult to manage the situation from 200 miles away.
The "at our own expense" offer then became a "can we have a rent reduction if we install the shower" request. In hindsight, I should have told them to fuck off at this point but, in the circumstances I was in, I made a deal to meet them half-way on this. As it happened, an old back injury recurred during this training course (it was a vocational degree as an NHS professional, so I was treated very much like an employee rather than a student) and for various reasons that I won't go into here, I ended up being slung off the course and at this point unable to return to my own home until the tenants' initial six months had expired. What a mess, eh?
But eventually, I was able to return to my house and the shower installation looked like it had been a competent job. A new circuit and circuit breaker had been added to the fusebox, a pullcord switch was installed in the bathroom etc.
However, I was completely oblivious to the change in building regulations that required that any such work carried out after 1 Jan 2005 needed to have either a certificate by a qualified person or approval from building control.
This has now arisen as an issue because of the conveyancing process and my solicitor wanted to know what certification there was for this work and of course I have nothing to show for it. She has said we could get indemnity insurance to cover the fact that it's non-compliant with building regs (even though I understand that the council could only do something about it one year after the work was done and that time has expired, so the indemnity is a pointless waste of money). The trouble with this, I understand, is that it may not surprisingly alarm the buyer and lead to them pulling out or expecting a price reduction.
I believe the former tenants are still in the area and I should be able to find them. I wonder if it is worth approaching them with a view to rectifying the situation? If he has made a cowboy installation without notifying building control etc, then he'll be in deep doo-doo if I report him, won't he?
I could also try chasing the letting agent. I still have some correspondence about this offer on Gmail. There was also some discussion on the phone about it, which I don't have a record of, but the emails are still evidence that this offer was made - and with the agent's full knowledge. The agent at no time mentioned certification was necessary and they do have a duty of care to keep abreast of relevant legislation, surely?
So I'm also minded to approach this agent direct and demand that they sort this mess out, e.g. by getting their in-house maintenance people to inspect the work, reinstall if necessary and certify it. If they don't, I will report them to the council and to their professional body (ARLA - association of residential letting agents, of which the agent boasts so much about being a member), find my own electrician to do the remedial work and sue them in small claims for the costs.
Or should I just pay through the nose for all this myself like a mug and just put it down to bad experience? This could cost several hundred pounds to put right and it's money I just don't have. I'm actually unemployed at the moment and I'm selling the house to escape a benefits trap (if I take on a temporary job for a few weeks, for example, and then have to sign back on, I end up losing the mortgage interest payments). Selling the house and buying somewhere outright means I'm free to take up whatever work I please without having to worry about mortgage or rent and housing benefit etc.
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