When do I need to use the Party Wall Act?

Ques­tion:

When do I need to use the Party Wall Act?

Answer: The Par­ty Wall etc. Act 1996 pro­vides a means for a build­ing own­er to car­ry out works to their prop­er­ty where a bound­ary occurs i.e. the divi­sion of the build­ing owner’s prop­er­ty to the adjoin­ing owner’s (neighbour’s) prop­er­ty. Why use the Par­ty Wall etc. Act 1996?

As Sec­tion 20 of the Act stip­u­lates a Par­ty Wall can be defined as either:

Type A Party Wall

- A wall that stands on the prop­er­ty of more than one build­ing own­er (pic­ture right), if the actu­al wall does not extend into the land of a dif­fer­ent own­er and only the foun­da­tion does so, it is not con­sid­ered a par­ty wall.

Type B Party Wall

- Walls that sep­a­rate prop­er­ty between own­ers, such walls may be present on one or both sides of a bound­ary. View in Sec­tion. View In Plan.

Under the act there are more def­i­n­i­tions where you may not typ­i­cal­ly asso­ciate the work with a Wall:

Party Structures [s 3, inc. s 2, ss 2 Party Wall etc. Act 1996]

include divid­ing ele­ments such as floor con­struc­tion i.e. the floors sep­a­rat­ing flats are Par­ty Struc­tures. Sim­i­lar­ly, the alter­ation or removal of chim­ney stacks, breasts and pro­jec­tion form­ing part of a wall will require notice under the Act.

Excavations [s 6, Party Wall etc. Act 1996]

There are two noti­fi­able instances under Sec­tion 6 which relate to exca­va­tions, (as an exam­ple) these are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant if you are con­sid­er­ing an exten­sion Sec­tion 6(1) or a base­ment con­ver­sion Sec­tion 6(2).

Party Fence Walls [s 1, Party Wall etc. Act 1996]

Gar­den walls (pro­posed and exist­ing) are like­ly to be either Bound­ary or Par­ty Fence Walls. The wall in ques­tion must be of mason­ry con­struc­tion. Con­crete posts or tim­ber fences are not in the def­i­n­i­tion.

Gen­er­al­ly, you can assume that: alter­ing, repair­ing or in some oth­er way affect­ing the exam­ples shown here you will need to noti­fy the own­er of the adja­cent prop­er­ty. Remem­ber by exer­cis­ing ‘the Act’, it gives you the right to car­ry out such works and with­out it, that right, as it were, does not exist.

Serv­ing Notice is nec­es­sary one or two months in advance of the works com­menc­ing. The Adjoin­ing Own­er (neigh­bour) has 14 days to respond to the Notice in writ­ing. Should the Adjoin­ing Own­er pro­vide no response or dis­agree, they dis­sent and an Award must be made.

De minimis

describes works to par­ty walls that are non-noti­fi­able such as:

- Dry-lin­ing
— Plas­ter­ing
— Paint­ing
— Rawl Plugs (depen­dent on size and appli­ca­tion)