Damage From Neighbours Building Work - Compensation

roses

Hi,

Apologies if this is the wrong forum. My neighbours had building work done (mid terrace) and in the process, four rooms in our house have cracks running from floor to ceiling.

We had a party wall surveyor and they've already accepted liability. The question now is how much compensation.

We want the room put back to it's original condition. We don't want to see any patchwork done eg different shades from the newly painted wall compared to the unaffected wall.

The party wall surveyor has advised us that we can only request that the neighbours pay for the damaged wall to be decorated, not the whole room regardless of if there is a noticeable difference in colour.

My questions is, if we can see a difference in colur, are we not entitled to ask the neighbour to pay for the whole room to be repainted? Why should we be out of pocket due to their works? We had no intention of redecorating at all.

Does anyone know what we are legally entitled to?

We got 3 quotations for the repair work which range from £2,000 for only affected areas to £3,000 for all rooms to be repainted.

lincroft1710

https://www.gov.uk/party-wall-etc-act-1996-guidance

The above link gives a further link to a booklet explaining party wall legislation

I_have_spoken

Why should we be out of pocket due to their works?

You shouldn't be - you should be restored to the position as it was before their negligent act. But you can't make a claim to give an 'enriched' position.

ging84

You can't really expect your neighbour to pay for walls they did not damage, what if you had 100 walls and he damage 1, would you expect them to pay for all the undamaged walls to be repainted so they all match ? because even if it's just one undamaged wall or 1 million the same principles would need to be applied.

artbaron

I'm not sure why the new paint would look different. On a car, yes, you might have a case for respraying the whole car on account of one damaged panel, but in a house? Note that you forgetting what paint code you used is not a good enough reason. If you've forgotten the code and brand then that's your lookout. But that specific paint code not being available any more might well be a good enough reason, if a matching colour can't be found.

roses

Thanks all. I'm thinking of proposing to them that we will accept to have the affected areas painted only. And if we see a noticeable difference then we will request to have the whole room redone.

What really annoyed us was that both surveyors told us we should only expect a "contribution" to decoration, we should not expect the whole room to be painted. Two of the decorators I got quotes from also told me in their experience this is also true!

We really don't see why we should be out of pocket because they decided to do major renovation (if it comes to that but at this stage it's quite possible that we could be making a mountain out of a molehill).