to have expected some notification from my neighbours

[PanicMode]

that they were putting scaffolding all over the front of their house this morning?

We live in a Victorian semi, and share the 'wall' between our steps out to our front doors. When I left to do the school run this morning, there was a large piece of scaffolding being put out outside their front door, and sitting on the 'wall' bit.

AIBU not to have had a "just to let you know" sort of notification?!

(The wider issue is that we have told them that at some point we will need to scaffold in order to do some work on the chimney - if they had told us, we could perhaps have done it at the same time and saved money - but this is irrelevant really for the purposes of my qu!)

YANBU it's only polite to notify party wall sharers when undertaking such work.

YANBU, especially if they are intending to do anything at all that touches the party wall, in which case they should have come to you asking you to sign a party wall agreement.

It's for painting of the exterior wood work apparently, but it's still a full height scaffold and presents us with security issues - would have been the decent thing to inform us I would have thought.

But then this is the man who said "I'm not talking to you" at a drinks party when I answered a question he had apparently addressed solely to my husband about the Euro..apparently professional working women aren't allowed to have opinions on things in a social setting

If he is a twat, then don't accommodate him at all wrt this work. If he needs your signature before he can do certain jobs then make him wait for it.

No professinal women should keep to the home and affaris of the home. So you have even more right to know when some tosser is going to put up scaffolding outside your front door!