Hello and welcome to today’s property surveying blog post in which we are going to be taking a look at Party Wall Surveying matters. In this blog post, we are going to be concentrating on the Party Wall Awards and your right to review the Party Wall Award.
The Party Wall Award is the final piece in the Party Wall Surveying procedure and is considered a legal document. Within the Award, it will set out the proposed works that will fall under The Party Wall etc Act 1996 generally including drawings, method statements, and timings in which the proposed works are going to be carried out.
Party Wall Notice
For us to understand the final piece in the Party Wall Process it is also important to understand the first piece, which is the serving of the Party Wall Notice.
For the purposes of this blog post, I will not go into too much detail regarding the Party Wall Notice itself but what is important in relation to the Party Wall Award is the way that one responds to the Party Wall Notice.
Depending on how you responded to the Party Wall Notice will somewhat affect how the Party Wall Award itself is created.
As if you were to consent to the Party Wall Notice then this would mean that there is no reason for the creation of an Party Wall Award as by consenting to the Notice you relinquish the right and protections that The Party Wal etc Act 1996 affords you an aspect of that being the Party Wall Award.
The second response option that we have to the Party Wall Notice is to dissent and appoint an Agreed Party Wall Surveyor. So this will mean that there would be one Party Wall Surveyor who will act on behalf of all parties involved and so they would be solely responsible for the creation of the Party Wall Award.
Whereas the final response option that you would have available to you is to dissent and appoint your own Party Wall Surveyor who would oversee the Party Wall procedure on your behalf. Within this response option is also the inclusion of a third Party Wall Surveyor who is capable of being called upon in case there is a disagreement with the other Party Wall Surveyors involved.
Party Wall Award
Once the other aspects of the Party Wall procedure have been completed then the final aspect is going to be the drafting and servicing of the Party Wall Award.
Agreed Party Wall Surveyor
In cases where there is an agreed Party Wall Surveyor, they will be solely responsible for the creation and the servicing of the award on to the parties involved, who will then have the opportunity to review the Party Wall Award.
Two Party WallSurveyors
In cases where there is more than one Party Wall Surveyor involved in the procedure, a preliminary draft will be sent to the adjoining owner’s surveyor for their review, where they will be capable of making any amendments i.e. to add additional provisions to the Party Wall Award if they so choose to.
Once this has been done and the two Party Wall Surveyors are happy with the clauses of the award, then the respective Surveyors will present the Party Wall Award to their respective parties for their review and record.
Third Party Wall Surveyor
Although in some cases such as this where there are multiple Party Wall Surveyors involved with the creation of the Party Wall Award if the two Party Wall Surveyors are incapable of agreeing on some of the provisions of the Party Wall Award, a third surveyor may need to be called upon to create the Party Wall Award.
Once the award has been drafted the third Party Wall Surveyor will serve that award to the respective Surveyors of the parties involved who will then serve the Party Wall Award to their respective appointed owners.
Disputing a Party Wall Award
Once the Party Wall Award has been serviced you will have 14 days to review and dispute the award through the courts, who would be capable of modifying the Award or even rescinding it entirely.
I hope this gives you further insight into Party Wall surveying matters and if you have any questions or quires in regards to the Party Wall Procedure or any of the other services that we offer here at Stokemont then please do not hesitate to get in touch by either giving us a call or alternatively popping us over an email. One of our experienced team of surveyors will be happy to assist and advise you.
