Neighbours wall and my garage roof, what my rights?

refche

Hi all,

I am looking for some advise in relation to my rights. The story is that an elderly lady next door has decided to sell her house and move into a flat closer to her daughter. We both live in semi-detached house with two garages between us, hers and mine. I do not know all the history but it seems that both garages were built in two stages, altogether over 10 meters in length. The roof at the front of my garage is attached to the neighbours garage wall. The back of both garages has a shared wall. Lower part of the wall is brick and at the top there are glass panels through which we can see each other. Both roofs at the back lean onto the wall in between for support. I have lived in the house for 6 years. The doc from the council shows both garages on the drawings hence this set up must have been in place for some years. The neighbours had a visitor today, new buyer/owner and they discussed adding an extension to the house. If the new owner decided to knock down  their garage and the existing wall (front part and back part) between the two garages and build new extension, my garage roof will not have any support. I am not aware that any third party wall agreements exist. What are my rights in relation to this? What are my neighbours rights? I do not want to cause any unnecessary disagreements with my new neighbours. Given current circumstances I am not in a financial position to spend money on any garage work. If i have some rights in what happens with the wall, i would like to know, if my neighbour has rights and can do as he pleases then i have to do what right no matter what my financial position is. Your advise in this matter would be greatly appreciated. 

Kind regards

Refche

Rosa_Damascena

Won't your potential new neighbours have to apply for PP to knock down and replace? You can object at that point.

refche

Tnx for your reply.
Yes I would expect them to apply for PP and I would use it as an opportunity to state my objections. But would my objections have weight to it? What could be my objections? Is simply enough to say that my garage roof will fall down, or that I have right to this wall as it has been in place for many years. What else?

Ectophile

If the wall is part of your garage and their garage, then it is a party wall.  You need a party wall agreement at the point where they want to do something that affects the party wall.  You can't just knock down a party wall and allow the neighbour's property to fall down.  Until you see what they intend to do, you don't need to do anything, except talk to them to find out what their intentions are.

GDB2222

As Ecto says you have a share of this party wall, and you are entitled to continued support for your roof. Anyone drawing up plans will have to take that into account. 

Planning permission has nothing to do with it.  Planning rules don’t take account of whether a job is practicable.  You should discuss this with your neighbour before they apply for planning, so they can at least understand what your concerns are before they make their plans. 

rach_k

You don't need a special agreement or anything in your deeds etc for you to have rights over the party wall.  If a wall is shared, it is a party wall and you have rights automatically.  They can't just knock it down or intentionally do anything to damage your property.  If they do cause damage unintentionally they have to pay to sort it out properly.  

You can't stop them building an extension, provided that it's all otherwise above board, but they have to give you at least 2 months' notice of any work affecting the party wall (you can agree for shorter notice if you want).  You can reach agreement together about how they will prevent any issues for you, or if you can't do that you can appoint a surveyor to help you sort it out.  They have to pay for that.  You can't insist that they improve your properly e.g. you can't say "I'm not letting you do any work unless you turn my garage into a three storey granny flat with indoor pool", but they do have to make sure you aren't disadvantaged, so if you have a functional garage now, you should be left with a functional garage when they've finished.  If you agreed to do things like remove windows between you, that's up for negotiation - maybe you don't want to lose the windows but they don't want them, so they offer to re-cover your roof instead, or maybe it would be cheaper to knock down both garages and build you a completely new one... if you approach everything in a friendly way, I'm sure you can work it out so you're both happy.  If you don't have any money to spend, be up front about it at the start so everything is clear.