Hi there,

Me and my partner are interested in a house in Beighton. The house has an attic room that is currently used as their sons bedroom.

What I need to know is whether the conversion is legal. After watching all these tv programs on homes, i'm sure I heard that you need to have a window that can be used as a fire escape in an attic room. This house only has a large window in the ceiling.

Can anyone help please?????

Your solicitor can request the bulidings inspection certificate to show that the conversion meets regulations. If it doesn't meet regulations and/or hasn't been certified I don't think they can count it as a room when selling the property, so you can ask for a hefty reduction in the price as it will go from being (for example) a 3 bed to a 2 bed. The only problem is that if you do that, it remains a problem when you come to sell unless you spend the money to make it a proper conversion.

It depends on when the conversion was done..
The building regs are changing all the time..

We had ours done last year and we had to have a window put in on the gable end of the house as a fire escape because we have an extension on the back of the house which would have prevented a ladder being put up to the velux's on the roof if there was a fire...

Also, we had to have every door (except the bathroom)that led onto the hallway, into a self closing door, again because of the fire risk..

Is the window big enough to get out of and is it accessible by a ladder ??

Thanks for the help.

The window is big enough to get out of, but I think you would struggle to get a ladder to it.

I think that if it's big enough to get out of, then you'll be OK..

Still check it out though.. I'm no expert on this, I'm just saying what happened with ours last year...