neighbours carrying out work on party wall without notification

halia

For the past 3 years our next door neighbour on one side has been a Multiple occupancy rental with a very fast turnaround. We've had a few issues with tenants voer noise - loud music and shouting late at night (we've got a preschooler)

They've had it up for sale for a while and now the owner is doing work on it, its fairly heavy duty stuff. There's been extreme banging and demolition noises all week and LARGE quantitites of bricks out in the garden. From the noise and the bricks they must have taken down the internal wall (structural) and they say they are opening out the chimney breasts as well.

its knocked a couple of our pictures off and the furniture we have screwed to the wall on one wall is coming loose.

I've tried to make contact with them to find out whats going on, its not a building firm just a succesion of youngish lads (seem to be extended family)who dont seem to speak english (or they didn't reply/looked bemused when I spoke to them). I know the Landlord/Owner doesn't speak english very well as I have had a brief and very stilted conversation with him when I went round to ask if they could keep the banging down as it was past 6pm. They've lied to us about the work thats being carried out (said it was just putting a new fireplace in - 5 days of demolition and a skipload of bricks?!))

Apart from the wear and tear on my hearing/stress levels from the ongoing noise my real concern is that they are bashing about on the party wall and the shared chimney stacks without much idea of what they are doing and it coudl affect the structural stability of our house as well.

I know that work on a party wall requires a party wall notice - which obviuosly we havn't recieved. I somehow doubt that they have adequete insurance either and I'm getting worried that they will knock out their chimney breasts or something and the whole shared chimney stack will collapse.

What is the best thing to do given that attempts to talk to them about it havn't succeeded. (I also dropped a friendly note round 2 days ago).

Pssst

Have you contacted th local authority planning department for guidance?

marybishop

Or try Building Control - they're the ones concerned with things like chimney breasts being taken out as that requires Building Regs approval. And if that's what they're doing you should have definitely been served a party wall notice.