Party wall enclosure costs

muddlingthrough

Hello - we bought a house and converted the loft space into a mansard and we’re advised we should pay our neighbours enclosure costs for building up to the party wall. We also extended our kitchen into the side return but built our own Independant wall alongside the neighbours party wall. Their surveyor says we must also pay enclose costs for the kitchen - we have said that we have an Independant wall and they have said that we have to prove it has a cavity within it otherwise it’s not a sufficient wall and we must pay them costs. Surely if we have built our own wall then we shouldn’t have to pay enclosure costs - can anyone help? 

FaceHead

Do you have legal cover on your home insurance? If so, call them and get their opinion. Whilst the neighbour might not have said it yet, the way this is going is they could end up claiming the costs from you - it's better to get to a sensible agreement early.

Focussing on the side return, it boils does to whether you've gone from not "making use" of the party wall to now making use of it. Why didn't you just simply enclose on it, and have more space? Does it have a cavity? Your building control submission will show this clearly if so. You don't have to prove anything - they have to do the proving as they are the ones that might bring a claim. 

So would your construction be building regs compliant without their wall? If so, say so: say you're not "making use" of the party wall as you built your own building-regs-compliant wall. If you are now making use of it, then you do in fact owe them. 

With respect the the roof, it's hard to tell without seeing the before and after drawings, but were you making use of the party wall there both before and after? 

muddlingthrough

Thank you so much for replying. I have found out that the wall was building reg compliant but the total thickness of concrete blocks and insulation plasterboard is 135mm - we have our own foundation of 270 mm - so we do have our own independent wall but do we have to still pay enclosure costs if the wall isn’t as thick as a standard external wall? Great advice re home insurance I’ll check that out - thank you

Doozergirl

It's almost impossible to answer this without drawings and photographs.  

I'd try to help if you can post some more detail, but there's nothing solid to base an opinion on at the moment. 

muddlingthrough

I’ve now found that our builders built a wall with 120mm concrete block plus internal plasterboard for the kitchen wall - with our own foundations. We are being charged enclosure costs for the full wall. A friend has said that the wall has to be thicker to avoid paying enclosure costs - can we rectify this by adding something internally to the wall? In addition I read a case study where two surveyors agreed that before the adjoining neighbour did their side return kitchen extension there would have been an existing party wall that we would have benefitted from - and that the costs ( which include everything involved with building a cavity wall) should only apply to the section of wall that wasn’t the existing party wall - does that make sense? Can anyone shed any light on this. And lastly the neighbours surveyor has asked for money to cover damage to the cloakroom but hasn’t included it in the award amount they have listed it separately- and shown us no before or after photos -does that mean we have to pay it?