Party wall act

Posted by: Fozz on 01 March 2007

Hi, I wonder if anyone knows anything about this.

I am about to commence some building work that may fall under the act. I am excavating within a 3m distance to a neighbour's garage and because I do not know the depth of foundations of this garage I may end up excavating deeper than the foundations of this garage and thus come under the act.

Because of this I have served notice to the neighbour that I intend to commence this work. I have used a standard letter from the guide with the paragraph that we do not intend to protect or otherwise underpin her foundations.

Now I admit this wording is a bit scary and has put my neighbour off signing. Can anyone advise me if she is signing away her right to claim from me should her building collapse? Personally I doubt this is the case as I assume she could claim from me. Anyway,if not, maybe I could put some words in my letter to say we would sort it out if the garage wall collapses.

I really would prefer to do this rather than get a party wall surveryor involved as it will cost £700 plus VAT and most likely they will just tell me to do something like I propose anyway. I should add the neighbour is friendly but concerned, and she too does not especially want to get surveyors involved.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Gary

Posted on: 02 March 2007 by Rasher

You need to dig a small hole to find the depth of the foundation to the neighbours garage. You then need to draw the foundation with a line at 45 degrees from the foundation bottom corner, which will represent the area of pressure beneath the foundation. Put onto this drawing your new foundation and draw a line beneath the foundation corner at 45 degrees again to show the pressure beneath your proposed foundation. They will of courese cross one another, but they need to cross beneath both foundations and not on either foundation. If this is the case, then you can illustrate that your proposals will have no influence on the garage.
You also need to write in the letter "I agree to undertake any repairs to the garage caused directly by my works to my property for the duration of the works". The last bit is necessary because you don't want them to come back with a complaint in 20 years.
Take loads and loads of photographs of the garage wall inside and out, and print them and get both parties to sign and date them in order to avoid arguments about which cracks are new or were there before.
That should do it.
In essence, you are giving them a promise to put right any damage to their poperty, but need to limit this for you own sake.

Posted on: 02 March 2007 by Fozz

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Rasher and I will print this reply with the diagram in case of any future issue. I have had much frantic investigation on this as I only realised I had to comply a week ago and building starts in 2-3 weeks!

I actually checked with my home insurance company and they said that my liability as a home owner to my neighbour in the event of damage to their property IS covered to 2 million. So with this knowledge I have basically added a statement to the notice to say that the neighbour is not signing away the right to claim against me if something goes wrong.

I could not time frame it, they were not happy with that. In the end I am a decent neighbour and want to do the right thing but this "act" does nothing to help! What is wrong with the old method of "if you damage my property you will pay"?

thanks again useful info. We are now signed up as agreed but would still be interested to see what others think about all this!

Gary