Finishing and handover · Worth care
What paperwork must you end up holding?
Certificates, guarantees, manuals and as-built information — collected before final payment.
- When it lands
- At handover, not months later.
- What it costs to get wrong
- Missing certificates surface at the worst possible time: when you sell. Chasing them years later is often impossible.
The last hour of a project is worth more than it looks. Certificates, guarantees, manuals and as-built drawings are easy to collect while the builder is still on site, and painful to reconstruct once they are not.
Ask for the pack before final payment
Once the final invoice is settled, chasing paperwork depends entirely on goodwill. Make the handover pack a condition of the final payment and it appears.
What must be in it
Building control completion certificate. Electrical installation certificate. Gas safety documentation where relevant. As-built drawings and structural calculations. Warranties and guarantees for the roof, windows, boiler and appliances, with product manuals. Any FENSA or equivalent certification for windows.
Check every certificate names the correct property address and the actual installer. Certificates naming a different address or a subcontractor who has since disappeared cause real problems years later.
£4,000 off the asking price
Three years after a loft conversion, a homeowner sold up. No completion certificate had ever been chased and the builder was untraceable. A regularisation application, an indemnity policy and a nervous buyer took roughly £4,000 off the sale price and six weeks off the timetable.
Store it where you will find it in ten years
Scan everything, keep a cloud copy and a physical folder, and tell somebody else in the household where it is. You will next need it under time pressure, in a conveyancing chain.
Why this one matters
The paperwork is part of what you paid for. Held together in one place it protects the value of the work; scattered across three inboxes it effectively does not exist.
Do this week
- Send the handover pack list to your builder now, not at the end.
- Make the pack a condition of the final payment.
- Set up the folder where it will live permanently.
The realistic choices
Collect at handover
Make it a condition of the final payment.
Store in the portal
Everything in one place, with the project it belongs to.
What good looks like
- Building control completion certificate
- Electrical and gas certificates, structural sign-off, product guarantees
Questions worth asking
- Which certificates are still outstanding?
- Who do we contact if something fails next year?
From real projects
£4,000 off the asking price
Three years after a loft conversion, a homeowner sold up. No completion certificate had ever been chased and the builder was untraceable. A regularisation application plus indemnity insurance, and a buyer's price reduction, cost roughly £4,000 and delayed exchange by six weeks.
The lesson: The paperwork is part of the asset. Collect it while you still hold the money.
Putting it into practice
What this decision should leave behind
The steps to work through, the paperwork worth keeping and the questions to send your builder today.
- · Ask for the pack before final payment
- · Check every certificate names the right property and installer
- · Store it where you will find it in ten years
- · Template: Handover pack request
- · Paperwork: Building control completion certificate
- · Paperwork: Electrical installation certificate and gas safety records
- · Paperwork: As-built drawings and structural calculations
- · Paperwork: Warranties, guarantees and product manuals
Next decision
What happens if something goes wrong afterwards?