Party Walls - Avoiding Disputes with your Neighbours

06/06/2008

Disputes with neighbours can be acrimonious affairs so they are best avoided especially if you plan to carry out works to a party wall or boundary wall.

If you own a semi-detached or terraced building, residential or commercial, you share a wall or walls with your neighbour. These are known as party walls and before starting any building works affecting such walls it is important to get your neighbour’s agreement. If there is a tenant or leaseholder in the adjoining building you will need to advise both them and the landlord of the proposed works.

The Party Wall Act 1996 sets out a procedure to follow and there are serious consequences including prosecution for failure to comply. The spirit of the act suggests that neighbours should view ownership of party walls as being shared (jointly owned), rather than each having sole ownership of one half of the wall. It may be a wall, or in the case of flats, a floor or a structure that once built will perform a boundary dividing role.

The Act was largely introduced to keep party wall disputes out of the courts. It creates a process that resolves the vast majority of disagreements and importantly it imposes a binding solution.

Activities covered by the act are upgrading (including rebuilding) to meet current building regulations, building a wall wholly on one party’s property which will become a party wall, underpinning, cutting into the wall (for example to support one end of a steel beam), inserting a damp proof course, demolishing overhanging sections, (removing chimneys, jambs, flues etc.), reducing the height of the wall (to not less than two metres), repairs requiring access to neighbouring land and excavating foundations up to six metres from a neighbouring building.

“The key point is whether your planned work might have consequences for the structural strength and support functions of the party wall as a whole, or cause damage to the adjoining owner’s side of the wall” explains John Clark, building surveyor and party wall expert at Aitchison Raffety. “If you are in any doubt about whether your planned work requires a notice you might wish to seek advice from a qualified building professional.”

If the wall and nature of the work are covered by the act then if there is a dispute it is surveyors and not solicitors who decide how and when the works are carried out and who is going to pay the bill.

For further information contact John Clark, Aitchison Raffety – john.clark@argroup.co.uk