Party wall surveyor fees gone way over estimate

jmedwards

Hi all

When we engaged our party wall surveyor, he estimated about £2-3000 to cover the fees of all the party wall surveyors involved (approx ~£1000 for the adjoining's surveyor and ~£1500 for our surveyor).

However, the fees have escalated to nearly £10,000. £6000 of that is our surveyor's fees and £3000 of it the adjoining surveyor.

The adjoining surveyor was a big City surveyor firm: vastly overqualified for the job (but we unfortunately had no say in the appointment). Typical rates in London are £185 per hour, this City firm charged £280 for a junior surveyor, and did an overburdensome survey and that demanded an overburdensome award for our relatively tiny project.

Our party wall surveyor explained that because this adjoining surveyor was so burdensome, he had to spend a vast amount more time with time and on the awards (5 drafts). Hence why his fee is 4x more than the estimate.

However, we or our architect was not once warned that the fees were escalating well above his original ~£1500 estimate; we only found out once we received the invoice.

The estimate was discussed over the phone between the surveyor and my architect before engagement, and then my architect sent a written summary to me. No fees were mentioned in the engagement letter.

I was wondering what my position is here: does our surveyor have a basic duty of care to us to warn us if the fees were escalating so much? I mean, what if we simply did not have this money? 25% over budget I could and did expect, but not 300%.

PheoUK

Anything in the contract?

teneighty

Tricky one this. The overriding requirement of the Act is that fees must be "reasonable"


It does sound like your surveyor let the adjoining owner's surveyor take control and then just went along for the ride. Is he an experienced and qualified surveyor and a member of a professional institution?


It is usually the building owner's surveyor who does the schedule of condition with the adjoining owner's surveyor only to accompany to agree the contents of the schedule. Likewise the building owner's surveyor should prepare the award with the adjoining surveyor just commenting and requesting changes. If the adjoining surveyor asks for things that are unreasonable or overly onerous and time consuming then it is up to the building owner's surveyor to take control and rein him in.


From the rates you quoted it looks like your surveyor spent about 27 hours on the job. Ask for a detailed breakdown of how this time was spent. I would expect to see that for a fairly complex project like a cellar conversion or a small commercial scheme.


Try to avoid going to the Third Surveyor. That will just cost you more money and they tend to find in favour of the other surveyors. I would go for a formal complaint against the two surveyors, assuming they are members of professional institutions and have internal formal complaints procedures.