Housing Trust & Party Wall Agreement!

chrissfoot

Hi all,

I have recently decided that I want to extend my house. I have had plans drawn up and submitted for planning permission (and have just received it). The two neighbouring properties are both owned by the local housing trust and this is, naturally, where the trouble starts! I checked with both neighbours way before we even applied for permission and they are both perfectly happy with the plans we have put together. On one side we will be building up to the boundry where there is currently a 6ft fence (owned by us) and the other side we will be about a meter from the boundry. This will all be single story.

I had a letter from the housing trust a few days ago informing me that I had to serve party wall notice, fine, I thought. Did a bit of research, found what notices to serve and that I could do it all online. Unfortunately, I have had another letter this morning from someone else at the same trust informing me that I am under obligation to undertake a survey. Naturally, he is a surveyor and can recommend a company that we may wish to use!

It seems to me that I haven't even served the notices yet and they are already disagreeing with the works! Is this worth fighting or should I bite the bullet and spend the upwards of 1k on this survey?

I'd love to hear opinions from anyone with knowledge of this field. It seems very unfair that they are going to force me to have a survey when a simple agreement usually suffices!

Thanks

Chris

bosseyed

I'm not massively au fait with party wall stuff, but I was under the impression you're only obliged to appoint a surveyor if there is some manner of dispute over the works with the parties either side? ie, you can draft up the documents and serve them to your neighbours (and I presume also the housing trust) and if they have some issue with your proposal then they can insist on you appointing a surveyor at your expense. Is this person who wrote the second letter objecting to the works in some way?

mike_the_bike_2

Its designed to protect both householders owners. The surveyor pops around looks at the area near where you are extending that is on their property/land and says either it looks ok or there is already signs of cracking subsidence etc...

You build your extension and the surveyor pops back looks at your neighbours property and either says..no change or your extension building work has damaged their property ..and you go from there.

I'm not sure if they can sue you for not serving a party wall notice ? But if your extension doesn't cause any damage to their property I can't see how they could come after you for compensation as the onus would be on them to prove it..

Depends how much a thousand quid is worth to you I guess in the context of the overall project and peace of mind?

mart.vader

You might find this thread of use.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/58516473#Comment_58516473

or this

http://forum.building.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?tid=496

First of all there is no penalty in the PWA for not complying with it.

The PWA only mentions the "adjoining owner" , and not the adjoining owners' agent or his tenant or anyone else - so you need to be sure that the Housing Trust "own" the houses. It's fairly common I think for Owners/Landlords to lease the property to the Housing Trusts, so the actual owners may be abroad so, what do you do if the owner is uncontactable ? THe PWA doesn't say.

If you go ahead, without serving the required notices, the adjoining owner, (or presumably his solicitor, but not his tenant, or the housing trust, unless they own the properties) can apply for a court order / injunction for you to halt work, which may take weeks. It's then up to a District Judge to rule on whether you stop work until you get a party wall agreement with the owners.

If they don't get a court order or they are too late to stop you, they only have cause to complain if the works have caused any damage, which they can sue you for, in the usual way, through the courts. If there's no damage, there's absolutely nothing they can do against you. How much damage could you do to the ground, anyway ?

From your post, it doesn't appear that your works are at all likely to do any damage. and lastly I don't see that a Party WALL is involved. Party Boundary maybe.

Owners have got the idea, probably from PWS's that an award means that they are going be awarded some money, but that's not what a Party Wall Award is.

I'm sure surveyors will advise you that it's absolutely critical that you follow the PWA, but they would, wouldn't they ?

Edit : From the Government guide to the PWA, persons with a lease longer than 1 years are classed as adjoining owners.

chrissfoot

Thanks so much for your help. I've read the party wall act more thoroughly now and i'm pretty certain that none of my work is actually covered by it anyway so it seems it's just the council blowing hot air.

This being the case it seems that I have 2 options, either I completely ignore the council's letters or I reply stating exactly why our construction doesn't break any of the party wall act rules. I think i'll go for the ignore option! At worst they can get an injunction (though I suspect this will not be granted if they can't actually show that the work is covered) which, as previously noted, can take weeks. My builder thinks that it's only 10 weeks work anyway and i'm not planning on telling the council when I start work!