Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council’s issue of a completion certificate for building work carried out by the previous owner of her property. This is because we cannot achieve any worthwhile outcome for Miss X.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Miss X, complains the Council wrongly signed off building work to a property she has since bought as compliant with the Building Regulations. She says the property is unsafe and it will cost more than £70,000 to put right the substandard work.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I reviewed Miss X’s complaint and the Council’s responses. I shared my draft decision with Miss X and considered her comments.

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What I found

4. Miss X purchased a property in 2020. The previous owner had work carried out to the property which the Council inspected and issued a completion certificate for. Miss X says the work is substandard and has commissioned a report setting out the issues with it. She says she will have to take down the previous work and rebuild at a cost of more than £70,000. She believes the Council is responsible and that it did not carry out adequate checks. She wants it to pay to rectify the work and reimburse her for the costs of the reports and rent until she can move into the property.
5. Building regulations set standards for the design and construction of buildings to ensure the health and safety of people in and about those buildings. They provide a means for the local authority to maintain building standards in general, rather than imposing a duty to maintain standards in each particular case.
6. When carrying out their functions under the Building Regulations, local authorities may visit at various stages but the number and timings of any inspections vary by local authority and type of development. Local authorities are not present for the great majority of the project and do not act as a ‘clerk of works’. On request and when satisfied after taking 'all reasonable steps' that the Regulations have been met, they must issue a completion certificate. This is not a guarantee that all works have been done to the required standard.
7. We would expect any person purchasing a property to have a full survey before completing the purchase. If a defect is later discovered in work completed before the purchase we would expect the building owner to have a remedy against either the person who carried out the survey or the previous owner. Caselaw has established that even where a local authority issues a completion certificate it does not take on responsibility or liability for substandard work; this remains with those responsible for the work rather than with the Council for signing it off.
8. Because we cannot say the Council is liable for Miss X’s costs we cannot recommend it reimburses her; she may therefore wish to obtain legal advice about the possibility of a claim against the former owner and their builder.

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Final decision

9. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because we cannot achieve any worthwhile outcome for Miss X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman