Hi all, I wanted some advice about the inspection that occurs when building works complete please.
I started a previous thread for party wall advice where our neighbour has been difficult for no valid reason during our build and has continually placed unreasonable requests on us. We initially entertained the requests as we felt guilty for level of disruption building work inevitably causes but he wore us down with constant threats of reporting us to planning enforcement/party wall/taking us to court even though no breach/damage/offence had occurred.
Anyway, he approached us about apparent changes to floorboards and wall, stating this is something we need to rectify under party wall. We visited with our builder and read the original surveyor's report to ascertain what he was asking for. We rectified one legitimate problem immediately (on the exterior of property) and were planning to meet the rest of his requests (predominantly painting) to avoid expensive surveyor fees and to maintain relations....
But he then attempted to use a previous issue (which we drew a conclusion and both parties signed written agreement to) and add in an additional clause as leverage. His stance were that if we agreed to him altering a part of our property, he would allow us to resolve party wall informally, otherwise he wanted to get surveyors involved.
After advice from some lovely posters on here, we went back through our award and discovered a final survey was included from his surveyor so we requested this was completed and we would make good any damage from this report therefore he had no leverage to amend our previous agreement. Of course, he was not delighted and attempted to backtrack and get us to do the work anyway but we have stood firm.
So our problem - we have instructed our surveyor to get his surveyor to do the final inspection. Our surveyor said they have received the request but have not yet inspected. Our neighbour is insisting that the surveyor does not want to inspect and want us to resolve amongst ourselves. We have paid for this inspection in our fees and expect it to be done. We also strongly suspect our neighbour has realised that he cannot get us to remedy pre-existing damage so is delaying/preventing the final inspection but we want sign off to stop him saying in 5 months time that a creaky floorboard/hairline crack was caused by us.
What can we do about this to get the inspection complete? If any damage has occurred as a result of our works, we want to repair it and ideally before our builders finish. Am I allowed to contact their surveyor? My surveyor is sadly pretty useless and gives minimal communication