Neighbour problem

kellye14

Hi, hope someone can give me some advice.

We are renovating our house at the moment and have been having problem with my neighbour. ( I have posted this in another thread previously) . While the party wall is still happening. The next door has been taking pictures of all the works that is outside the scope of the PW and have been complaint to her surveyor, water board and council about everything we have done.

It seems that she has nothing else to do but to try to control everything we are doing on our house.

She has been asking my builder about everything that they are doing, eg we can't build our loft yet as the PWA is going on so I have asked my builder to work on the fence, clear the garden and work on the drains outside. ( we are diverting our drain and have got permission from the water board ). She complaint this to the water board and they have an inspector to check our drain and the inspector is happy with our work. Now we have just place a new manhole on our own driveway and she took a pic of the manhole and complaint to her PW surveyor.

Her surveyor is charging by the hour so he would be extreme happy to have a client like her as they will be able to charge us more money.

We have been very polite to her so far and have explained things that she has concern with but most of her replies are about teaching us how to live our lives. The problem is because everything happen to our house she will go complain and we have to deal with the extra stress.

How do I stop her?

Tiddlywinks

I'd want to know everything about works which involved a party wall if my neighbour started building.

You need to understand her worries - she did not choose this work - you have imposed it on her.

Suck it up.

Better_Days

I haven't seen your other thread but it is probably very disruptive for her having renovations going on next door. Plus I can understand her caution. She does not want the value of her property, or its saleability to be impacted by the works you are undertaking.

Could you inform her as you go along what is being done and the relevant permissions you have obtained? Plus perhaps also a small token as an appreciation of the disruption you are causing to her life. If you are going to be living next door for a few years it is worth putting some effort into the relationship.

When we first moved into our last property the neighbours came round and complained about our cats. We did all we could to sort out the problem and apologised for the inconvenience. Over time it worked out and we became friends. It did take quite a bit of effort especially as initially the neighbours were rather unfriendly.

kellye14

If the issues she has concerned about is related to the party wall then of course it is very understandable for her to concern and complain. But she is complaining about the fences, the patios, the drains ( which is not her drain) and they are not to do with PA.

She has her house extended previously and the whole thing started because she didn't like the size of our extension which is only 1 meter longer than hers.

Of course we shared her pain of having next door being renovated and we have tried our best to minimise her pain but it seems everything we do in our garden, eg put up washing lines she thinks we are destroying the natural beauty of her garden!

Takeaway_Addict

for my interest, why would her surveyor cost you more money?

McKneff

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

for my interest, why would her surveyor cost you more money?

I wondered about that too....

Sensible_Jess

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

for my interest, why would her surveyor cost you more money?

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe under the PWA the person doing the work is responsible for both parties costs.

kellye14

Sensible_Jess wrote: »

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe under the PWA the person doing the work is responsible for both parties costs.

Yes. We are responsible for her surveyor's cost and he is charging £175+vat per hour.

His surveyor is famous to charge ppl 5k to 10k and because she has been asking him all sort of non pw related questions, his fees is already closed to 4k and it is still not near to the end yet!

It is like a living hell for us ATM because she has been ringing every authorities there are to stop us doing any work ( even they are not PW related)

geoffky

Did you sit down with this neighbor and go through what you propose and keep them informed...?
I would be looking after my interests also and i do not blame the women..
Looks like a communication mess up..

Errata

It seems to me that a woman living on her own in her own property is perfectly entitled to ask whoever she chooses whatever she chooses, in order to discover everything she feels she needs to know that will or could effect her property.

balletshoes

Whilst I'm sure this is frustrating for you OP, I really don't think theres much you can do about your neighbour racking up your surveyor's bills.