Help With Alterations
This subject may interest you because either:
- you are considering making alterations to your property, or
- someone else in your block is making alterations and you are concerned about whether what they are doing will have any adverse effect on the building.
Under most leases a leaseholder is required to obtain consent before making any alterations to a property. It's a simple process also known as an application for a Licence to Alter.
For obvious reasons there are precautions and procedures that need to be followed before a Licence should be granted. All Leaseholder Support.co.uk membership levels get access to Ringley's Building Engineering Team for chargeable advice and/or inspections to the property, to assess whether proposed alterations are safe. Fees are chargeable to the lessee wanting to make the alterations.
Common alterations which would require a "Licence to Alter" include:
- installing an additional bathroom, shower or WC
- installing a new boiler flue that means a new cutting through an external wall or new flue liner in a chimney shaft
- removing any wall, solid or partition wall within a flat
- changing any windows
- All membership levels get access to Ringley's Building Engineering Team. The team can provide a "desktop determination" assessing whether proposed work, or work in progress, should be controlled by the Licence to Alter clause in the lease. Fees are chargeable to the lessee wanting to make the alterations.
- All membership levels get access to Ringley's Legal Services Team for chargeable advice and/or preparation of the Licence to Alter (permission to carry out the works), which then forms part of the lease to be conveyed to any new purchaser thereafter. Fees are chargeable to the lessee wanting to make the alterations.
- All membership levels get access to our Legal Services Team for chargeable advice on covenant enforcement and risk management where a lessee has decided to carry out alterations without following the procedures set down in his/her lease. Fees are chargeable to the lessee making alterations in default of their lease.
Our Legal Services Team can bookmark the 19 key clauses in your lease so you are aware what requirements are set out in the lease.
