Do You Need A FENSA Certificate In Exeter? What It Covers And How To Get A Lost One Back

Most people in Exeter find out what a FENSA certificate is at the worst possible moment: about four weeks into a sale, when their solicitor emails asking for one and nobody can find it. The windows went in years ago, the company that fitted them has changed its name twice, and the buyer’s conveyancer has just added a query that stalls exchange. It is one of the most common paperwork snags in residential conveyancing, and it has been for over two decades - replacement windows have been controlled work under the building regulations in England since 1 April 2002. Six government-authorised schemes can certify that work, a duplicate FENSA certificate costs £30, and knowing which of those facts applies to your situation is usually the difference between a two-day fix and a four-week delay.

The Certificate Nobody Thinks About Until A Solicitor Asks

When you sell a house in England, you fill in a property information form, and one of the questions asks whether any windows or external doors have been replaced since April 2002. If you tick yes, you are expected to hand over the paperwork proving that work was signed off. That is where the FENSA certificate lives - not in a filing system you consult regularly, but in a drawer you empty once a decade.

The awkward part is that the certificate is issued to the property, not really to you, and the responsibility for making sure the installation was registered sits with the homeowner rather than the installer. That distinction feels unfair, and it surprises almost everyone who runs into it. If a company fitted your windows in 2014 and never told FENSA the job was finished, the gap in the record is yours to close in 2026.

For a straightforward like-for-like replacement, none of this needs to be complicated. Our window installation service handles the notification as part of the job, and the certificate arrives without the homeowner doing anything. The problems almost always trace back to jobs where nobody was clear about who was registering what.

What A FENSA Certificate Is - And Who Actually Issues It

FENSA is not a government department and it is not the council. It is a competent person scheme, authorised by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which lets registered installers self-certify their own work against the building regulations instead of booking a council inspection for every job.

The mechanics run like this. The installer fits the windows, then notifies FENSA that the work is complete. FENSA registers the installation with your local authority on your behalf and issues you a certificate. That certificate states three things: that the installation complies with the relevant building regulations, that the products meet the energy efficiency requirements, and that the work has been registered with the council. It also confirms the installer’s warranty is insured, which matters if the company later goes under.

FENSA sets out what the certificate covers on its own certificate guidance pages. Read it before you assume yours covers everything glazed on the property.

The self-certification route exists because the alternative is unworkable. If every window job in Exeter needed a council inspector to attend, building control would grind to a halt. The scheme trades that inspection burden for ongoing auditing of the installers themselves.

What FENSA Doesn’t Cover, Which Is Where Exeter Sales Come Unstuck

The scope is narrower than most homeowners assume. FENSA covers replacement external windows, doors, roof windows and rooflights in an existing dwelling, where the property stays on its original footprint and the rooms are not resized or repurposed. Everything else sits outside it.

That excludes conservatories, porches, new-build properties, extensions, repairs where the frame is not replaced, and commercial buildings. Plenty of Exeter houses have had a conservatory bolted onto the back at some point in the last thirty years, and the assumption that the glazing certificate covers it is one of the more common misunderstandings we hear.

There is a second Exeter-specific wrinkle. A FENSA certificate confirms building regulations compliance. It says nothing whatsoever about planning permission, conservation area consent, or listed building consent. If a property in one of the city’s conservation areas had timber sashes swapped for uPVC without consent, a FENSA certificate does not legitimise that change - the two systems run in parallel and neither substitutes for the other. Buyers’ solicitors in the older parts of the city increasingly raise both queries together, and only one of them is answered by the certificate.

The city’s rental sector adds volume to all of this. Exeter has a student population in the tens of thousands, and a large stock of converted terraces around Pennsylvania, St James and Newtown that have changed hands between landlords repeatedly. Each transfer is another chance for the window paperwork to fall out of the file.

FENSA Is One Of Six Schemes, Not The Only One

FENSA is the name everyone knows, which leads people to panic when their certificate says something else on the letterhead. It should not. For replacement windows and doors in existing dwellings, the government currently authorises six competent person schemes: FENSA, CERTASS, Certsure, NAPIT, Blue Flame Certification, and ASSURE.

A certificate from any of those six is equally valid. The full list is published on the government’s competent person scheme register, which is the document to send a conveyancer who insists that only FENSA counts. It happens more often than you would think, usually with buyers rather than solicitors.

So when you are checking an installer’s credentials, the question is not “are you FENSA registered” but “which scheme are you registered with, and what is your registration number”. Write the number down. A company can quote you while its registration is lapsed, and the certificate only materialises if the registration is live on the day the job completes. Anyone comparing quotes should read our guide on how to choose a window installer in Exeter alongside this, because scheme membership is one check among several.

Lost The Certificate? Start With The £30 Replacement

If the windows were fitted by a FENSA-registered company, the record still exists whether or not your copy does. FENSA holds a searchable database, you look it up by address and postcode, and a duplicate certificate costs £30 including VAT. You can pay by card online or post a cheque with a covering letter giving the installer’s company name, your name, and the installation address.

Before you conclude that no record exists, check the obvious failure points. Postcodes get mistyped at the point of registration. Properties that were renumbered or renamed at some stage will not match. Jobs that involved altering an opening rather than replacing a window like for like may sit outside the scheme entirely. And if the installer was registered with CERTASS or NAPIT rather than FENSA, you are searching the wrong database - each scheme keeps its own.

The single most productive step, if the company is still trading, is to ring them. Installers can usually confirm from their own job records which scheme the notification went to and when. A five-minute phone call resolves a lot of these before anyone spends £30 or instructs a solicitor to chase it.

Never Had One At All: Regularisation Or Indemnity Insurance

Sometimes the windows genuinely were never registered - a cash job, a builder doing it as part of a wider refurbishment, or a company that has since dissolved. At that point you are choosing between fixing the record and insuring around it.

Regularisation is the fix. It is a retrospective application to Exeter City Council’s building control team, and an inspector assesses whether the installation meets the regulations that applied when it was done. You may have to expose fixings or provide evidence of the glazing specification. If it passes, you get a regularisation certificate, and the gap in the record is permanently closed. FENSA suggests allowing a few hundred pounds for this route, and you should budget for remedial work on top if the installation falls short - the government’s overview of building regulations approval explains where the retrospective route sits.

Indemnity insurance is the workaround. It is a one-off policy, typically £20 to £100 for a straightforward residential case, that pays out if the council takes enforcement action against the new owner. Conveyancers reach for it constantly because it is cheap and it takes days rather than weeks. Two things about it catch people out. It protects the buyer’s finances, not the buyer’s windows - if the units are badly fitted, the policy changes nothing. And approaching the council to ask about regularisation can void the availability of indemnity insurance, so you have to pick a lane before you make the call.

For a sale under pressure, indemnity usually wins. If you are staying put, or the installation quality is genuinely in doubt, regularisation is the better answer.

What To Ask Before You Sign An Installer’s Quote

All of the above is avoidable at the quoting stage, and it takes about three questions.

Ask which competent person scheme the company is registered with, and get the registration number in writing on the quote rather than as a verbal assurance. Ask whether the certificate is included in the price or charged separately, because a small number of firms treat the notification as an extra. Ask how long after completion the certificate arrives - a few weeks is normal, several months is a warning sign that notifications are not being sent promptly.

Then check the answer yourself. Each scheme runs a public register of its installers, and confirming a number takes a couple of minutes. A company that hesitates over any of this is telling you something useful.

Finally, keep the certificate somewhere that survives a house move. Scan it, email it to yourself, and put a copy with the deeds. The £30 replacement fee is not the painful part of losing it - the fortnight of delay while a sale sits waiting is.

If you are planning to replace windows in Exeter and want the compliance side handled without you having to think about it, get a free quote and we will confirm the scheme registration and certificate timing before any work is booked.

Frequently Asked Questions