Party Wall Act work in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire

If you're building on or near a boundary you share with a neighbour, there's a legal process you have to follow before you start. It's the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, and it applies whether you get on with your neighbours or not.

We've dealt with this on hundreds of projects across Alfreton, Amber Valley and the wider Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire area since 2000, mostly on extensions and conversions where the work sits tight to a boundary.

A party wall is a wall that stands on the land of two owners. The wall between two semi detached houses or two terraces is the obvious one. So is a garden wall built astride the boundary line.

The Act covers more than just walls though. It also covers floors between flats, excavation near a neighbouring building, and building a new wall right on the boundary line.

Three situations, and any of them means you have a duty to notify your neighbour before you start.

Work to an existing party wall. Cutting into it to take a beam, raising it, underpinning it, removing chimney breasts off it, demolishing and rebuilding it. Notice must be served at least two months before work starts.

Building on the line of junction. Putting up a new wall on or right up to the boundary. Notice must be served at least one month before.

Excavating near a neighbour's building. Digging within three metres of a neighbouring structure and going deeper than its foundations, or within six metres if you're going deep enough to cut a line drawn at forty five degrees down from their foundation. Notice must be served at least one month before.

That excavation one catches people out constantly, because it applies even when you're not touching their wall at all. A standard extension foundation next to a neighbouring house very often triggers it.

Don't. Your neighbour can apply for an injunction to stop the work, and courts do grant them. You could have a half dug foundation and a stop order.

It also leaves you exposed if anything cracks next door. Part of the point of the process is the schedule of condition, which records the state of your neighbour's property before you start. Without it, any existing crack becomes your problem to disprove.

They have three options once you've served notice.

They can consent in writing, and that's the end of it. You keep the letter and you get on with the project.

They can dissent and agree to use one surveyor between you, which is called an agreed surveyor.

Or they can dissent and appoint their own surveyor, so there are two, and the two of them appoint a third to settle anything they disagree on.

If they don't reply within fourteen days, that counts as dissent. It doesn't count as permission. That's the other thing people get wrong.

Where surveyors are appointed, they produce a Party Wall Award. That sets out what work can be done, how and when, and records the condition of the neighbouring property beforehand.

We prepare the notices and the drawings that go with them, so your neighbour can see exactly what's proposed rather than trying to picture it from a letter. Vague notices are the ones that get dissented.

We advise you on whether the Act applies to your project in the first place, which is often the whole question. Plenty of people worry about it when they don't need to, and plenty more find out too late that they did.

We work out the timings so the notice periods don't hold your build up. Two months is a long time if nobody told you about it until the week before you wanted to start.

And where an award is needed, we'll tell you plainly that a party wall surveyor needs appointing, and what that involves.

Yes, before any paperwork lands. A notice arriving cold, with no conversation beforehand, is the single most reliable way to turn a neighbour who would have consented into one who dissents.

Go round, tell them what you're planning, show them the drawings. Most of the time that's the whole problem solved and they consent in writing a fortnight later.

Yes. Industrial and commercial projects on tight sites hit the excavation provisions regularly, and the same rules apply. We do a lot of this sort of work, so it's familiar ground.

Early. Ideally at the same time as the planning application, because the notice periods run alongside everything else rather than after it.

Leave it until the builder is booked and you'll be waiting two months you didn't budget for.

If you're not sure whether the Act applies to what you're planning, for more information please call us on 07773 899 597 or contact us through this website. First consultation is free and we come to you.