The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 sounds like a reason for a row with the neighbours. In practice it’s a timetable and a set of forms, and most of our clients never meet the surveyors at all. This is what it asks of you.
When the Act applies
- Work on a wall you share: cutting in steels, inserting a damp-proof course, raising or thickening it.
- Building a new wall on the boundary, as most side-return extensions do.
- Digging near a neighbour’s foundations: within 3 m and deeper than theirs, or within 6 m in some cases.
The notices and the timings
| Type of notice | Notice before work |
|---|---|
| Party structure notice: work on the shared wall | 2 months |
| Line of junction notice: a new wall on the boundary | 1 month |
| Notice of adjacent excavation | 1 month |
What happens next
- Your neighbour has 14 days to reply in writing.
- If they consent, no award is needed. We still photograph their side of the wall first, so nobody argues about old cracks later.
- If they dissent, or don’t reply, the Act treats it as a dispute. Each side appoints a surveyor, or both agree on one.
- The surveyors write an award: what will be done, how, when, with what access, and a record of the wall’s condition before work starts.
What it costs
As the one building, you pay the surveyors’ fees. An agreed surveyor usually costs £1,000–£1,500 per neighbour; two surveyors, £2,000–£3,000. A basement or anything complicated costs more.
How we handle it
We flag party wall work at the first survey and put the notices in the programme, so they never hold up the start date. A friendly knock before the letter arrives does more than any surveyor: most neighbours consent when they understand what’s coming.