Party Wall surveyor

[StephanieErin]

Hoping someone can help!

our neighbour disputed our party wall notice and agreed to use our suggested surveyor. Now the survey has been completed and they have received the surveyors assessment (which said there were some structural issues on their side) they want us to pay for their own surveyor as well as a third surveyor to resolve it - can they do this even though they already agreed to the shared surveyor?

I can’t see any advise online with this scenario!

Steve the party wall surveyor here. You have both agreed to use an Agreed Surveyor, that appointment is binding and is an alternative to each party having their own surveyor. Where there are two surveyors there is a "third surveyor" to whom a dispute can be referred if the surveyors cannot agree. There is no third surveyor when there is an Agreed Surveyor (bit difficult to disagree with yourself). That means the agreed surveyor can find themselves stuck in a hard place if there is a problem - they are going to upset one side or the other and probably both.

Your neighbour cannot "sack" their surveyor and change tack mid course because they don't like the answer, if you neighbours have appointed an agreed surveyor then they are (in most circumstances) stuck with it.

A surveyor can deem themselves incapable of acting, but for an agreed surveyor to that on one side only is very difficult and quite likely not enforceable. Equally to try and step aside because the going just got difficult is also of questionable professionalism and unlikely to be enforceable.

Hope that helps

Steve

Thanks Steve! the neighbours are threatening legal action in all their correspondence so it’s quite intimidating to disagree with them so having your reply has given me son confidence!

Happy to discuss offline if you want to PM me. Not a pleasant situation, and one where the neighbours think they have some sort of financial and legal leverage. There are some very aggressive, very expensive, and sometime not very good PW surveyors out there. Steve