Unauthorised works have a favourite moment to surface, and it isn’t the enforcement letter — it’s the sale: the requisitions on title arrive, planning compliance is asked of every structure on the folio, and the extension nobody questioned for twenty years meets the one reader whose job is to question it. Here’s how that plays out — and how to fix the file before the market reads it.
How It Surfaces Mid-Sale
The machinery: the purchaser’s solicitor requisitions the planning position — permissions and compliance for the original build and every alteration since — expecting the standard proofs: permissions, condition compliance, and certificates of exemption or compliance from an architect or engineer for works claimed exempt. Where a structure has no answer, the cascade is predictable: the queries (delay), the lender’s position (banks dislike planning question marks attached to their security), the price conversation (the purchaser’s solicitor advises risk; risk gets priced), and at the bad end, the collapsed contract — with the property returning to market carrying the same question plus a failed sale’s stain. The seven-year rule helps less than sellers hope: it answers the enforcement question (“can the council act?”) while the requisition asks the status question (“is this authorised?”) — and “statute-barred but unauthorised” is a discount conversation, not a compliance answer.
The Cures — Bought at Leisure or at Speed
Every cure works better before the property lists: the Section 5 declaration where works were genuinely exempt — the authority’s formal determination converts an architect’s opinion into a statutory answer that closes requisitions cleanly, and it’s the first route checked because it concedes nothing; retention permission where the works need it and merit it — a grant regularises the title’s planning position outright, with the honest assessment first (a mid-sale refusal is the worst document a file can acquire), per the retention guide; the professional certificate where exemption is clear enough that a Section 5 is overkill — standard conveyancing currency for standard works; and where none fits cleanly, the managed disclosure — the position stated accurately, priced deliberately rather than discovered adversarially, sometimes with insurance solutions in the mix. The timing arithmetic is stark: at leisure, these cures cost weeks and modest fees; mid-contract, the same cures cost the sale’s momentum, the purchaser’s confidence, and negotiating position by the day. Selling in the next year or two? Audit the folio’s works now — it’s the cheapest hour of the whole transaction.
Buying rather than selling? The same map inverts: the works history murky on a target property is exactly when a Section 5, sought before contracts, converts your risk into their problem — and a purchase-side planning review belongs beside every survey on an altered property.
Works on the folio, sale on the horizon? The audit first: 01 5827148.