New builds and warranties
The building-control completion certificate names the house and not the detached garage. What has the survey not converted into a certificate?
It has not converted the building-control completion certificate into cover for the detached garage, and it has not added the garage's name to a certificate that names only the house. The survey can describe the garage it entered. Description is not certification. If the garage is missing from that certificate, the gap stays a legal question for the solicitor and building control, not a sentence the surveyor can initial.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Written for buyers in England and Wales unless this answer says otherwise. No named surveyor has signed this page. It is general guidance, not a report on your house, and not legal advice.
What is the fuller explanation?
Completion certificates record the work the building-control body says it has signed off. If the wording names the house and stops there, a buyer cannot stretch the page to a detached garage by wishing. The surveyor may have entered the garage, noted the roof, the door, the slab and any obvious movement. Those notes are condition. They do not amend the certificate, do not prove the garage was built under the same notice, and do not create a certificate where the pack has a silence. Approved guidance for building work is not a statement that this garage passed.
Show the certificate and the survey to the solicitor together. Ask them to check whether a separate certificate, a notice, or an explanation for the garage exists. Ask the surveyor to keep garage comments labelled as the garage, so nobody later says the house certificate swallowed them. Do not withhold that question because the garage looks tidy. Tidy and certified are different. The inspection has not performed the conversion the certificate itself declined to make.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- Did you inspect the garage, and have you kept it separate from the house certificate?
- Can your description be read as building-control sign-off? It should not.
- What limits should the solicitor see at the top of the garage comments?
What are the typical next steps?
- Ask the solicitor why the certificate names the house and not the garage.
- Keep the survey's garage notes as description only.
- Do not write the garage onto the certificate yourself.
Costs vary with the building and with who you instruct. Where this page does not cite a published figure, ask the surveyor, a relevant specialist, or your solicitor for a written quote. Do not treat a forum average as the price.
Also asked about this
If the garage was on the planning drawings, is it certified?
Not by those drawings, and not by the survey. Certification is the certificate's wording, which names the house.
Does a rating 1 on the garage roof fill the gap?
No. A favourable comment is still a comment. It does not extend a certificate that omitted the building.