Party wall awards, explained without the jargon

The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is not planning permission and it is not building control. It is a piece of civil law that sits between you and the house next door, and its purpose is narrow and rather sensible: to let you carry out work that affects a shared structure, while giving your neighbour a defined mechanism to protect their property and put right anything that goes wrong.

It is also the single most common cause of a delayed start date on a London extension, for one reason — the notice periods are fixed by statute and cannot be shortened by goodwill, enthusiasm or a builder with a gap in the diary.

Three kinds of notifiable work

The Act catches three categories, each with its own notice period.

• Work to an existing party wall. Cutting in to bear a new steel beam, removing a chimney breast, underpinning, raising or thickening the wall, inserting a damp proof course through it. Two months' notice.
• Building on the line of junction. Constructing a new wall at or astride the boundary where there was not one before. One month's notice.
• Excavating near a neighbouring building. Digging within three metres of a neighbouring structure to a depth below the level of its foundations, or within six metres where your excavation would cut a line drawn downwards at forty-five degrees from the bottom of theirs. One month's notice.

Note what is not in that list. Replastering your own side of a party wall, putting up shelves, ordinary redecoration — none of it is notifiable. And note what usually is: virtually every rear extension in London excavates within three metres of the neighbour's house to a depth below their Victorian footings, so the excavation limb catches jobs that never touch the wall itself.

The Act applies in England and Wales. Every owner of an affected adjoining property must be served, which on a converted house can mean the freeholder and two leaseholders rather than one person.

What happens after you serve

Your neighbour has fourteen days to respond, and there are exactly three outcomes.

They consent in writing. No award is required, no surveyors are appointed, and the job proceeds. This happens more often than people expect, particularly where the relationship is good and the work is modest. Even then, take a photographic record of the neighbour's property before you start — consent removes the award, not the possibility of a later argument about a crack.

They dissent. A dispute is deemed to exist under the Act. This is a technical status, not hostility, and plenty of neighbours dissent on their solicitor's advice while remaining entirely friendly.

They do nothing. After fourteen days, silence is treated as dissent. This is the outcome that catches people out — a neighbour who is on holiday, or who simply cannot be bothered to reply, produces the same result as one who objects.

Surveyors and the award

Where a dispute is deemed to exist, party wall surveyors are appointed. Either both parties agree on a single agreed surveyor acting impartially for both — quicker and cheaper — or each side appoints their own, and those two select a third surveyor to hold in reserve for anything they cannot settle between them.

It is worth being clear about the role, because the title misleads. A party wall surveyor appointed by you is not your advocate. Once appointed they act under a statutory duty, impartially, and they cannot be dismissed by the party who appointed them. Their job is to resolve the matters in dispute, not to win.

What they produce is the award — a legally binding document that typically records:

• The works that are authorised, described specifically rather than generally
• A schedule of condition of the adjoining property, usually with photographs, taken before anything starts
• Working hours, access arrangements and how the work is to be carried out
• Provisions for making good any damage, and who pays for what
• The surveyors' fees

Either party can appeal an award to the county court within fourteen days of being served with it. In practice appeals are rare.

Who pays

You do. As the building owner — the person carrying out the work — you normally pay the surveyors' fees for both sides, because the work is for your benefit. That is the default and it surprises almost everyone.

There are exceptions where the adjoining owner asks for additional work for their own benefit, or where their surveyor runs up costs unreasonably, but plan on the basis that party wall costs are yours. A straightforward agreed-surveyor arrangement is modest. Two surveyors, a difficult schedule of condition and a contested set of working hours is not.

Timing is the whole point

Two months for work to the wall itself, one month for excavation and line-of-junction work, then fourteen days for the response, then time for the surveyors to inspect and draft. Realistically, from serving notices to holding a signed award is six to ten weeks on a cooperative job.

That period runs perfectly happily alongside your planning application, your structural design and your building control submission — but only if it is started at the same time as them. Started after planning is granted, it becomes six to ten weeks of nothing happening while a scaffold sits on order.

We raise party wall at the survey, before drawings, for exactly that reason.

What happens if you do not serve

Notifiable work carried out without notice leaves you exposed. The adjoining owner can seek an injunction to stop the works, and you lose the protections the Act would have given you — including the benefit of an agreed schedule of condition, which is the single most useful document in existence when a neighbour points at a hairline crack that was already there.

The schedule of condition is worth serving notice for on its own. It has settled far more disputes on our sites than it has caused.

Talking to your neighbour first

The most useful thing you can do costs nothing: knock on the door before the notice arrives. A formal document delivered without warning reads as the opening move in a fight. The same document, arriving a week after a conversation over the fence explaining what you are doing and roughly how long it will take, reads as paperwork.

We have watched both versions of that play out many times. The conversation is worth more than the notice.