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Partie Wall agreement
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Selectdecorator
Posts: 6 Forumite

Hello everyone.
I’m after some straight forward advice. Our neighbours has build a ground floor rear extension to his property. It is a semi detached building with shared Partie wall. Before work commenced he arranged a visit from surveyor who drew up a detailed report including photos of the wall on our side.
The building work has now finish and we have found various cracks in our ceiling and the wall. Our neighbour refuses to get back the original surveyors, instead suggesting his builder come to assess the damage. We refused and now he is offering to pay someone to write a “letter of comfort that the building's integrity is unaffected” or alternatively pay us the sum of £400.00 to deal with the repair. All we want is a second visit by the original surveyor.
Can we demand that he arranges the return visit or, should he fail to do so, are we within our rights to employ a surveyor of our choice and then recoup the costs, including those for possible repairs and redecorating.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Kind regards
Peter
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Comments
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If you employ a surveyor now how will they know what the property was like before work commenced ,you should /could have employed one at the start as the other party would have had to pay their fees.0
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Thanks for your reply Ganga. As I have stated: “ Before work commenced he arranged a visit from surveyor who drew up a detailed report including photos of the wall on our side.” Or neighbours now refuses to call the surveyor back for a final visit.0
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A final visit isn't part of the official
process. Another reason the whole party wall thing is just weird.
It's highly unlikely to be anything structurally problematic. Remember, you share the wall, it's in their own interests to keep it secure.Where are these cracks? How
old is the house and the plasterwork?Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on earth.
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Thanks Doozergirl. Don’t think any of those cracks are necessarily structural but nonetheless they are new and unsightly. There is amongst others a 2metre diagonal crack up the wall and one of about 6metre length 10cm into the ceiling running along the whole length of the Partie Wall. Then there are a few more smaller hairline cracks.0
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Please see attached pics
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Can you not get the same surveyor to come back even at your expense to compare his notes / photos from the start ,he should know what he is looking at.0
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We probably could , that’s why I’m asking if we can recoup the cost incl and necessary repairs from our neighbour. Why should we be out of pocket?0
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I think you should allow their builder to come in.Next door are responsible for that wall, so if you allow them to fix it and it doesn't move, no problem.If it does open up again then you can look at surveyors for big problems and it is still their problem.For now, it might worry you, but houses are robust things and it really doesn't look serious, so for the sake of neighbourly relations let them sort it their way first. It looks like superficial plaster cracks in an old house after a bit of banging about
at the moment.Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on earth.
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I want to be able to choose my own decorator. The builders who did work on the exterior have treated us through the 8months it took to complete the work with utter disrespect. And the quality of their work leaves a lot to be desired.0
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Talk about that with next door; you don't need a surveyor for that.Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on earth.
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