Hello and welcome to today’s property surveying blog post, where we will be looking at the Party Wall Surveying matters. In today’s blog post we are going to be looking at when you should contact a Party Wall Surveyor if your plan works fall under the Party Wall etc act 1996.
Generally speaking, you should aim to contact a Party Wall Surveyor as early as possible, even if you are still in the planning stage by contacting a Party Wall Surveyor they will be able to advise you on whether your works do fall under the Party Wall etc Act 1996, if they do then they will be fully abreast to be able to assist you along the way.
If your planned construction works do fall under the Party Wall etc Act 1996 then there are specific procedures that would be required of you under the Act, such as the responsibility to serve a Party Wall Notice on your neighbours (adjoining owners) and depending on the types of planned construction works that you wish to carry out, the time required for you to serve the Party Wall Notice will vary.
Any works that fall under Section 1 of the Act concerning works on the Line of Junction, or Section 6 of the Act which relates to excavating near to the Adjoining Owner’s property both require a one month’s notice to be served to the adjoining owners.
Whereas other planned works will require a two months notice such as works that fall under Section 2 of the Act which relates to works to a Party Wall.
One should also keep in mind when planning construction works whether those planned works are going to require planning permission, as this will then inform the Party Wall Surveyor on when to serve the Party Wall Notice.
The Party Wall Notice itself is only valid for 12 months, so if planning permission is required for the planned works then one would not want to serve notice too soon, especially in cases where planning permission has yet to be granted.
This could leave you in the unfortunate position of needing to reserve the Party Wall Notice if it was to expire before planning permission has been granted, or even worse, the planning permission could be denied and this will leave you out of pocket having served the Party Wall Notice for no reason.
So for reasons such as what I have stated above it is imperative to get in touch with a Party Wall Surveyor as early as possible to avoid any of these pitfalls that one could face in the Party Wall procedure.
It is also especially important to contact a Party Wall Surveyor as soon as possible, in cases where the adjoining owners were to dissent to the Party Wall Notice.
When one dissents to the Party Wall Notice one of the options that becomes available to them, is the ability to appoint their own surveyor which in turn could slow down the Party Wall procedure.
This is going to be prominent throughout the Party Wall procedure as this will then require the building owner’s surveyor and the adjoining owner’s surveyor to go back and forth throughout the Party Wall procedure. So when it came time to do a schedule of condition, a time would have to be agreed upon that would be amicable for both parties.
Further to this in when it comes down to the creation of an award then this will require that the surveyors go back and forth to come to an agreement on what the award should entail and if they are incapable of coming to a resolution on any points in the award, then this will require the input of a third Surveyor.
All of which is going to slow down the Party Wall procedure, while also meaning that further cost is going to be incurred by the building owner, by virtue of delays in timings to their planned works.
By contacting a Party Wall Surveyor as early as possible we could work on reducing these delays as we would simply have more time available to us and so this would allow for greater ability on our part to plan for the worst case scenarios.
I hope this gave you further insight into Party Wall Surveying procedures, if you would like to discuss this or any other Party Wall Surveying matter in more detail with our team of experienced and qualified Party Wall Surveyors, then please feel free to get in touch today or alternatively feel free to pop us an email where we would be happy to assist and advise you.
