by mumoftwoboys » Mon Sep 16, 2013 3:49 pm
Hi there
We are also digging out a basement and had lots of delays before starting due to planning and party wall agreements.
Your neighbours can't actually object to your plans after you have received planning permission (they should have done so during the planning process) so you can carry out the work but it is better to have the party wall in place.
My advice to you is not to start the dig out until you have your party wall in place. It is a long, slow and expensive process but it's really important to have this in place before you start work. Thankfully, our neighbours agreed to use our party wall surveyor to act on their behalf as well but the whole process took about five weeks to finalise as the surveyor had to take photos of their properties to keep a record of any damage they had before our work started in case they later claim cracks etc. due to the work we had done in our house. We also had to get our lawyers involved as the neighbours wanted to put some money aside in case they needed it at the end of our project to fix their properties...
One thing that we did was to have a meeting with both neighbours, our party wall surveyor, architect, builder and structural engineer at the site to discuss the plans and the processes which I think really helped.
Good luck!
Hi there
We are also digging out a basement and had lots of delays before starting due to planning and party wall agreements.
Your neighbours can't actually object to your plans after you have received planning permission (they should have done so during the planning process) so you can carry out the work but it is better to have the party wall in place.
My advice to you is not to start the dig out until you have your party wall in place. It is a long, slow and expensive process but it's really important to have this in place before you start work. Thankfully, our neighbours agreed to use our party wall surveyor to act on their behalf as well but the whole process took about five weeks to finalise as the surveyor had to take photos of their properties to keep a record of any damage they had before our work started in case they later claim cracks etc. due to the work we had done in our house. We also had to get our lawyers involved as the neighbours wanted to put some money aside in case they needed it at the end of our project to fix their properties...
One thing that we did was to have a meeting with both neighbours, our party wall surveyor, architect, builder and structural engineer at the site to discuss the plans and the processes which I think really helped.
Good luck!