Thank you for clicking on today’s property surveying blog. Today, in this instalment of our informative surveying blogpost, we are going to be looking at Party Wall surveying procedures.
Party Wall procedures apply if a Building Owner, who is the owner undertaking the planned construction work, is planning on undertaking works to their property with those works falling within the realm and jurisdiction of the Party Wall etc Act 1996.
Under the requirements of the Party Wall etc Act 1996, also commonly referred to as ‘the Act’ in professional circles, the Building Owner has a legal duty to serve a Party Wall Notice on an Adjoining Owner prior to works commencing. An Adjoining Owner is the owner of a property, or neighbour, who adjoins the Building Owner’s property or site.
The timings surrounding Party Wall procedures are relatively difficult to estimate and confirm as, in many cases, response periods are out of the hands of the Building Owner and very much in the hand of Adjoining Owner(s) or, if applicable, the Adjoining Owner(s) Party Wall Surveyor.
Nonetheless, here at Stokemont we do appreciate Building Owners will want a firm idea or, at the very least, an idea of the timings and we therefore thought we would try our best to facilitate and accommodate this request.
Party Wall Notices
To start with, Party Wall procedures commence when a Party Wall Notice is served.
Party Wall Notices have a run period of 14-days, which effectively gives Adjoining Owner(s) 14 full calendar days to consider their response to the Party Wall Notice.
Section 10.4 Party Wall Notices are then served in the scenario whereby an Adjoining Owner(s) has not responded to the first Party Wall Notice served. The Section 10.4 Notice gives an Adjoining Owner(s) a further 10-calendar days to respond. Adding both of these respective notice periods together you have a total of 24-days and it is also worth noting that case law and professional good practice allows a two days respectively on serving of each Party Wall Notice as an allowance for postage. This effectively takes the response period to the Notices up to 28-days, or round about one-month.
Statutory Notice Periods
Statutory Notice periods are very much based on the type of works taking place. If you are planning on undertaking works that require excavations, or the construction of new walls up to, or astride, the boundary line, the Statutory Notice period is one calendar month.
If you are planning on undertaking works direct to a party wall, or underpinning a party wall, the Statutory Notice period is two-months.
In layman’s terms, this effectively means the earliest possible date a Building Owner will be able to commence their planned construction works, outside of Adjoining Owner(s)’ agreement to start early, will be the Statutory Notice period set-out. This is a key point to note for Building Owners as, in many cases, they can overlook this, serving Notice only days to weeks in advance of the contractor having booked the start date on-site.
Party Wall Surveying Procedures
Once an Adjoining Owner(s) has responded the Party Wall Notice and assuming they have dissented to the Notice and require the input of a Party Wall Surveyor(s), at that stage the timings are quite wide and open as, effectively, it will all come down to the quality of information the Building Owner has, the speed at which the Party Wall Surveyor(s) is able to carry out a schedule of condition report on Adjoining Owner(s) property(ies), whilst also taking into account the necessary time to agree the Party Wall Award.
Party Wall Award(s)
This is effectively the conclusive document which the Agreed Party Wall Surveyor(s) will agree in conclusion of their professional input.
Generally speaking timings can therefore vary, however, here at Stokemont we would advise allowing anywhere from two-weeks up to 12-weeks from when a Party Wall Notice has been responded to. Overall, timings tend to be toward the longer end of the spectrum with works that are structurally complex, or if drawings and/or information is unclear, or contains errors. Both of these scenarios and outcome will likely mean drawings need to be updated, revised or adjusted, all of which adding additional time, whilst the architect and/or engineer undertake these necessary changes.
There are also other scenarios whereby addition time can come into play, particularly applicable where works are structurally complex or of significant structural risk.
The Advising Structural Engineer’s Review
In the event the Building Owner’s work involve significant structural risk to change to the property, Adjoining Owner(s) Party Wall Surveyor(s) is likely to want to seek the input of an advising engineer, who will be in place to advise surveyors from a structural perspective, so surveyors are fully aware that they are indeed agreeing an Award that is based off mutual structural design.
An advising engineer can take anywhere from a couple of weeks up to 12-weeks, dependent upon the level of requests for detail the engineer may have, along with the duration of response times of the Building Owner’s engineer in reply to any queries.
Party Wall Procedures
Overall Party Wall procedures can proceed quickly, but timings are very much dependent upon the responses of Adjoining Owner(s) as set-out above, whilst importantly the level of information provided to Party Wall Surveyor(s) will either move things along swiftly or hamper progress.
If you would like to discuss your own (or your neighbour’s) planned works and would like to gage the amount of time that should be allowed to enable the Party Wall procedures to progress and concluded, we would advise giving us a call or sending us an email, and we will be more than happy to review plans, give you our professional assessment, whilst also providing you with a quote for our services and little bit more information about Stokemont.
Please feel free to get in touch today and we look forward to hearing from you.
