I’m thinking of selling my home – will I need approval for building work carried out before I owned the house?
If your home has been improved or extended by a previous owner, you will need to have the proper certification for it when you come to sell. If you do not have the relevant building certificates and no building regulation approval was given before work started, then you can apply for ‘regularisation’ - retrospective approval. A local council building control surveyor will assess the work to see if it is up to standard and, if not, recommend improvements to bring it up to standard so they can issue the appropriate certificates. You will have to pay a fee to your local council. (View further information on regularisation.)
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