Our granny annex top tips – No 8 Make sure you know your responsibilities

Make sure someone is in charge of important issues – there are many different issues which need to be addressed for a successful refurbishment or new living space build and in a short post I cannot address them all.

What follows are some of the available ones to give you a flavour of what I mean and to try to help prevent you repeating some of the mistakes which I have come across in the past or which others have made when having work carried out.

Now this is another area which might sound obvious making sure certain things are done but to the untrained person or just to the person new to an area there are many things that need to be considered when altering your living spaces and as the consequences for not doing things properly are very serious feel this is another good area to highlight.

Essentially when you start out you as the customer [who is having the work done] will be responsible for getting various things completed, one of the most obvious if you are having building work undertaken is planning permission, you will need to find out if this is required for your project or not.

There are many instances of people building without it, or thinking they are ok or being told by a builder that its not needed only to find out at a later date that it was needed, the result is often for the building to be demolished so it is worth checking this out before you start.

Make sure also that what you are building is in the right place, depending on your skill levels this maybe something you can check yourself if not make a point of checking with your builder or employ a professional to ensure it is. It is easy early on to move a stake in the ground but once you start building then moving the position of a building is well, nearly impossible.

Another point is that if you do get planning permission sometimes it comes with a list of conditions buried within your letter from the council, these need to be read and followed carefully as I have known people to not do this and again cause themselves all sorts of problems with issues such as selling their property in the future or having to spend out money to change things.

Another area is called Permitted development which is a way of extending or building without planning permission and needs to be checked to see if this applies to your work, again don’t assume something is permitted without checking it out with a professional first.

The next one refers to the building regulations which are basically details by which your work needs to follow, they need to be drawn on a plan [approved by the council] and then followed by the builder. At the same time you will need to have paid the council a fee for them to inspect your work, which once successfully inspected they issue you are very valuable completion certificate which you will need when you come to sell your house.

Only the other day did I come across a person who had carried out a conversion for their disabled mother and on asking the builder where the completion certificate was to be told by the builder that they did not have it.

No one had applied for it so the situation was not good. In order to get a certificate the owner had to approach the council, pay a fee and worse open up any area of work that the council surveyor wanted to see, including the brand new tarmac drive which had to come up to see that the drains were laid correctly.

Very expensive, time consuming and with a little thought totally unnecessary – all I am trying to say is do your research, employ a professional and make sure all what needs to be checked is done.

During our work we came across new things and learnt lots, information is available to help you from all sorts of sources so there really is no excuse for making big mistakes.