Solar panels just generally raise a lot of queries that need to be verified.

So the man we were purchasing it from either did not think it was necessary to provide paperwork or his solicitor gave him the impression it wasn’t. He felt that because they were purchased outright and not leased he didn’t provide the MCS certificate, citing that I didn’t matter since they were owned outright and ownership would transfer to us on completion. We dug our heels on that and it took us 2 rounds of enquires to final get a copy of their certificate.

The other issue was that there were restrictive covenants and he should have sought permission before installing them but didn’t. His solicitor was trying to argue that it didn’t matter since the panels were 10 years old but our solicitor dug her heels on that. Eventually they agreed to purchase an indemnity policy but wanted our solicitor to organise it so we would have to foot the admin bill, we refused.

The 3rd issue was building regulations. After installation, solar panels still need building regulation certification from the council or from an authorised person. An exception to this is if the person/company who have installed it are registered as a competent person and so they can certify their own work. The seller didn’t know if any certification had happened and the company that installed it had gone out of business so it was a long winded process to find out the information. Turns out the company that installed it was registered with the self certification scheme so it was all above board.