A house we are hoping to buy is a repossession so sold as seen which is essentially half way through a conversion. One of the things they have done is turn the garage into a ‘living space’/downstairs bedroom with a small shower room. They have bricked up the former garage door and put a window in. Apparently they have applied for building regs and we can see on the local authority portal that they have but it’s not completed yet because they were repossessed before finishing (looks like the back door is just balancing in the wall). So basically whoever takes it on has to take on the risk that it’s not approved.

My questions, if you can help, are i) do you definitely not need planning permission for that kind of work? And ii) if we didn’t plan to use it as a bedroom but maybe a store room/gym do we still have to follow up the building regs application and I guess iii) how likely is it that these applications are refused and what are the consequences.

Sorry that was longer than anticipated…