Neighbour demanding money to use party wall

[dogrilla]

We're using an off-the-peg loft conversion company to do a L-shaped conversion to our mid-terrace house.

One set of neighbours were fine but the other side (who completely renovated their house six years ago) have demanded that we pay them a £1,500 "donation" to use the wall they built for their loft conversion, otherwise they will "make it very difficult for us to proceed" by appointing surveyors etc. We don't know where we stand legally on this. Would obviously rather not get into double/triple surveyor territory, but feel pretty fucked off that they've pulled the figure out of mid air and expect us just to pay it. Our builder said the wall in question wouldn't have cost more than £1,500 to build from scratch so we shouldn't pay more than 50% of that...

Can anyone help or point me in the direction of an official guideline? Feel posting a shit though their letterbox at the moment.

[fatnfrumpy]

Ask your builder how much it would cost for him to built your wall next to their wall. Then fill the gap with cavity wall insulation.
Will scupper their get rich quick plans.
The cheeky gits!

[dogrilla]

HA! Brilliant idea.

I guess I'm just naive. I just didn't think people would be so shamelessly greedy, especially as we were far too nice when they were renovating their entire house. Six months of noise and dust, plus an ugly wall that blocks our kitchen light and we just smiled politely.

[Magimedi]

I suggest posting about this in the legal section of MN. There are some very knowledgeable people over there.

Agree with posting a turd!

[PragmaticWench]

I don't think it's unreasonable for your neighbour to instruct their own surveyor and for you to pay for it, that is normal when a party wall is involved and is required of you by law. Also, don't forget to serve them with a Party Wall Agreement. However, paying for their surveyor would be much cheaper than giving in to their blackmail for a random sum of money; what is to prevent them from upping the amount once you've started the building works?!!

Our neighbour recently told us they are planning to build a conservatory. We are likely to instruct a surveyor, for which they have to pay, but the neighbour the other side is demanding £7,000 from them in order to use the party wall to bolt the conservatory to. Astounding and disgusting IMO!!!!!