Calling all Party Wall experts!!

[tigerpug]

Hi there, posting here in a bit of a panic.

My mum has purchased a house (victorian terrace), which is a total do up. Currently, the house has been extended at the back to the Left hand side (kitchen) and to the right hand side (lean to, with connecting door to kitchen). Both of these are built against neighbouring walls. The plan is to open up the rooms and rejig, new doors etc. The new extension would be the same footprint as the existing one. As part of this, she needs to strengthen the foundations (not technical term - sorry) to the right hand side.

So, architect all good, permitted development etc etc, all by the book, and mum collected the plans and invited the neighbour over to show her, meet the builders, discuss the work and to highlight the need for a party wall agreement, which obviously mum would pay for.

This happened this morning. The neighbour went mad. As in, completely crazy screaming in the street, saying she would call the police, threatening etc etc. Mum and builders were in a state, totally shocked, but kept an even head and tried to pacify her, which obviously didn't work. Neighbour left saying she was calling her solicitor to report this atrocity.

Mum is now calling her solicitor for advice. We have now heard that she has form this this behaviour, and could possibly be struggling with mental illness.

Can someone shed any light on where that leaves mum, who is on a tight budget and had allocated a £1k budget for a party wall agreement and potential surveyor? Short of redrawing the plans (or leaving the leaking, unheated, lean to part of the extension in place) I don't know what to suggest, so I am hoping somewhere here might!

My concern is that however reasonable mum is, and whatever concessions she makes, this neighbour will cause any amount of trouble, delay and cost that she can.

Bumping!

She can enforce a party wall agreement, the neighbour can’t actually stop her. But she should expect some delay and budget for three surveyors (hers, the neighbours’ and the arbitrator). She should start by appointing a surveyor. Not an expert at all, just happen to know this bit!

The neighbour can't stop it. She can delay it as already said above.

Crucially, she can appoint her own surveyor. She can find the most expensive one she can- our neighbour threatened this. It can't be totally unreasonable, but there are surveyors out there who will charge a lot.

A party wall agreement can recommend that an amount of money for potential damage is put into a bank account so it is available if damage is done.

We didn't insist on this when our neighbour had an extension. A lot of damage was done and we are now in a position of having to take him to court to get the money we had to spend. This also has to be declared as a dispute when selling the house. It has been a total nightmare.

As suspected, this all sounds depressing and expensive. She is appointing a party wall surveyor today to get things started.

So serve the papers, wait two weeks for a response which will absolutely be a NO from the neighbour.... what can we expect from there? How long from then until the party wall agreement is in place, if the neighbour fights every detail? Two months? Or do you think it could take longer?

She can't say no. As long as it is permitted development/ has planning permission it has to go ahead. The Party Wall Act came in to make building easier, to stop neighbours saying no. However it is also supposed to protect the neighbour.

Have you not had the neighbourhood consultation which is part of permitted development? The council wrote to us about the neighbours plans and we were allowed to comment.

There is a book called The Party Wall Handbook that I found very useful.

Also, look on the gov.uk website.

That sounds absolutely awful.

We started work on our house last week and it sounds similar...
We have taken down the conservatory and the foundations are being strengthened - we originally thought the existing wall between our garden and neighbour's would need to be replaced, but it turns out it can stay, so there will be no change at all to neighbour's side.
Prior to work starting, our neighbour was being sent letters by expensive surveyors that made him worry his house would be damaged by our build and had originally thought he would go down that route.
Once he fully understood what we were doing, he happily signed the form and as a consequence it only cost us £30 😅.

Your mother's neighbour sounds like a different kettle of fish. Definitely seek advice before paying out anything... and see if she can be talked round 😬

Movinghouseatlast By consultation, do you mean the council sending letters to the neighbours? If so then yes, the neighbour in question received a letter outlining the plans. Annoyingly, the letter got to her before we did, so that's how she found out.

We were going to be completely open about everything, but were advised by the solicitor to wait to see if we were granted permission before we talked her through the plans - off the back of this conversation we were then going to reassure her and suggest a party wall agreement was put in place.

Huffahouse It sounds like we are doing the same sort of work as you - strengthening existing foundations. We aren't extending the building any more than it is, but just need foundations that will take the correct weight of the RSJs. You have lucked out with your neighbour, and i guess that's the difference between no delay & £30 outlay, and months of delay and £1/2/3k outlay.

This is simply horrible. Ive had mum here this morning in an absolute state.

I suppose with the benefit of hindsight, your mum should have discussed plans before getting planning permission. It's a bit fait accompli when you've got permission and neighbour is (to an extent) cheesed off at not having had chance to discuss it beforehand. Not ideal for neighbours to find out via letter from council.

Potentially give her a few days to calm down the try again to discuss it with her. As others have said, she has the potential to make it very expensive for your mother.

namechangedtoday15 You are absolutely right, and with hindsight this is what we would have done. However, our architect, who we are now rather angry with about this, neglected to mention she would be receiving paperwork about this prior to the planning approval.

So we were biding our time, waiting to hear if it would be approved, before we rocked the boat. However, I do think her response would have been the same, whenever we made contact.

In hindsight, i think we would have knocked on her door prior to mum putting in an offer, to sound her out about potential plans.

Its a nightmare really - especially because the plans have exactly the same footprint as what's there already, and would be done by professional builders, and meeting all building regs.

She has been making demands recently, such as (and Im not kidding....)

• I want you to keep your scaffolding up for another so I can use it (for free)
• Don't cut down a bush in your garden because its pretty and I want it left
• Your builder can patch up an area of my wall (for free)

The silly thing is, to keep the peace, my mum would have gone along with these things to keep her happy, as mum is really chilled and generally a good person. But now, its unlikely she will.

Hey OP.
How long did the party wall take to go through in the end? Our party wall dispute began today :( thanks!

This sounds very familar when we had a very damgerous wall that needed knocking down that ran the length of our garden, we started discussions with next door 2 years before any work started, we where open and asked how they'd like to proceed, we would pay etc it turned into a nightmare total breakdown of relationship silly demands to the builders, so much so we have put the house on the market. Its such a shame we had waited years to do work to our house andnow its all done it feels tainted.