Will try to keep it short. We live in a terrace house. New next door neighbour (ground floor flat) wants to extend into side return and use our side return party wall that we had built about 5 years ago. They will also be turning current one bed into two bed by extending out 3m into garden.
He mentioned this to us and we were fine. Said he wouldn't be building any higher than our side return wall so no loss of light for us etc. Asked if he could continue the party wall for his 3m extension into garden. We wanted to be amicable so said yes, even though we would never use it (very small gardens).
Fast forward a few months and we have a knock on the door from architect representing interests of elderly neighbour on the other side. He said did we know that our neighbour had applied for planning for a side return extension much higher than he had originally discussed. Almost 80cm higher at the party wall side return boundary (so that our velux windows would be looking at a brick wall) and side wall going out 3m would be almost 3m in height.
Anyway, saw that new drawings had been submitted a couple of months later which were lower and acceptable. New neighbour had dropped off a party wall agreement that he wanted us to sign. I contacted him and asked about the initial drawings and he said council has asked them to reduce the height and re-submit, but that the wrong drawings had been submitted originally anyway (🤔🤔).
Lost confidence in his honesty and want to protect our interests so said that we wouldn't sign and wanted to appoint our own party wall surveyor. He got aggressive with us. Pushing us to let his surveyor visit our house to do a condition report. We said no as we were using our own appointed surveyor. Our surveyor then made contact with him asking for his surveyors details. He then said that he didn't have a surveyor 🤔🤔. Then asked if he could use the surveyor that we had appointed to reduce costs. We said no, we want our own surveyor.
So he has now appointed his own surveyor who visited for the condition report last week. It transpires that he will have to pay 50% of the build cost to use our side return extension party wall. He also got nasty when we said that we didn't want him to build his 3m extension on the party wall line as we would never make use of it.
Are we being reasonable? This is so stressful. I feel that he has been trying to take advantage of us and has now got nasty. Ignored me in the street the other day. He has been never lived there so we don't really know him.