Fence problem

kellye14

Thanks for the people who responded to my post. I really appreciated them.

We are going to have a final respond from the third surveyor next week. He told us he will need to have his fee pay upfront before he releases the award. He also told us the payment will be from both of us and the adjoining owner. If the adjoining owner doesn't pay, he will not serve the notice.

We asked whether we can pay for the adjoining owner first if the adjoining owner refuse to pay so that we can have the notice and get on with our building work. He said we can and can take the adjoining owner to court to claim our money back. But I wonder how is this going to work. Because adjoining owner can argue they have never ask us to pay for their fee so they are not owing us any money.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how we should play this?

Thx

I_have_spoken

If the adjoining owner doesn't pay, he will not serve the notice.

Why wasn't such a basic point agreed when the 3rd surveyor was appointed for arbitration and adjudication?

TBH, it's usual for the party who loses in the adjudication to pay the 3rd surveyor fees. However, if you pay and are the winner, you could go to County Court to reclaim the money off neighbours.

Bear in mind, your neighbour also has 14 days to appeal the adjudication to County Court, in which case the 3rd party surveyor would be called as expert witness.

kellye14

Another update.

The PWA is still going on. The third surveyor has decided it is all the adjointing owner fault so they have to pay the full bill on the third surveyor and he capped the price for us on adjoining owner surveyor bill to a reasonable amount so we was very happy with that.

However next door still refuse to pay so we paid it all so that the award can be released. Now the third surveyor told us to take the next door to small claim and claim the money back.

After the recommendations from the third surveyor, now if the two surveyors signed the amended award then we can start work. But the adjoining owner surveyor refuses to sign it. He said he needs some explainations from the third surveyer first as he is not happy with his fees. He told our surveyor that he is not going to appear but he has told next door to appeal to the award and take us to court for damages ( which has ruled out completely by the third surveyor from his inspection) and he is not signing the award until he has third surveyor's explaination on his fees.

The third surveyer told us to wait for 10 days and if he is not signing it then the third surveyor is going to sign it with our surveyor. Does anyone know is it 10 working days or calendar days?

We thought the whole thing should finish by now but think it actuality will get even nastier as we think next door is probably going to sue us now and that will delay things further.


They has already successfully got the council to give us an enforcement order on us as they told council our site has been abandon and we have not clear the rubblish on our front and back garden which is damaged to their view.

I_have_spoken

we think next door is probably going to sue us now

They have the right to appeal the 3rd surveyor adjudication to the County Court.

If they go for compensation, they'll need to send you a 'letter before action' setting out the grounds on which they believe you owe them money. It would probably help your case, if you decide to defend the claim, if you first offered using Small Claims Mediation Service.

It sounds like their surveyor is egging them on; you could consider a 'notice before action' to his firm seeking compo. for stress etc.