Apply for a regularisation certificate

The purpose of Regulation 18 (Unauthorised Building Work) is to enable homeowners and others to submit applications for building regulation approval after unauthorised work has been carried out.

Typical circumstances may be where a builder or an owner (previous or present) did not seek the relevant building regulation approval before works commenced. It is not intended that this power should replace or detract from enforcement powers already available to Building Control, e.g, when an offence is perhaps more consciously created.

Application procedure

An application for a regularisation certificate can only be made where Building Control can be satisfied that:

• Work commenced on or after November 11^th 1985 and;
• The work required an application to be made in respect of building regulations and;
• The person who carried out the unauthorised work did not deposit plans or give such notice.

A regularisation charge is payable at the time the application is depositied with Building Control. Details of the charges are contained in the Charges and fees.

The charge can be calculated by multiplying the building notice net charge by 40%, N.B., VAT is not payable on this charge.

For advice on calculations of the regularisation fee, please Contact Building Control.

An application for a regularisation certificate will, in most cases, relate to completed work. However - in order to assess whether compliance with the regulation has been achieved the Building Control is empowered to require the applicant to uncover work where necessary. The applicant must be willing to comply with all such reasonable requests. Use of power, therefore, assumes a reasonable level of cooperation between the applicants and Building Control.

It is the responsibility of the applicant to carry out any reasonable actions in connection with the work, where requested by Building Control. If an applicant is unwilling to comply with any reasonable request, they run the risk that Building Control will be unable to judge whether the work satisfies the applicable regulations.

Examples of requests that may be made by Building Control to determine compliance:

• Exposure of foundations and/or other elements of structure e.g, steel beams, floor joists, etc, /exposure or testing of drains.
• Calculations or other details to prove that the structural work is satisfactory.
• Other details or specifications as considered where appropriate e.g., photographic evidence of the works taken at the time of construction.

Building Control may conclude that the work satisfies the requirements of the building regulations, in such a case we may issue a regularisation certificate, or

Building Control may notify the applicant that specified work will need to be carried out so that the work complies with the building regulations. When this work has been carried out, a regularisation certificate may then be issued, or

The third possibility is that Building Control may find that they cannot determine (or cannot determine without unreasonable cost or disruption to the applicant) what additional work would be required to comply with the building regulations. In such circumstances, the regularisation charge is not refundable as Building Control will have incurred costs in considering the application.

A regularisation certificate shall be evidence (but not conclusive evidence) that the relevant requirements specified in the certificate have been complied with and does not in any way imply that any permissions required under the Town and Country Planning Act have beeen granted. The regularisation application will be recorded against the property and its status i.e., whether a regularisation certificate has been issued, will be revealed during the local search process when the property is sold.