Case Studies

Occasionally, as a surveying practice, we need to act swiftly to safeguard a client’s interests. In this case, we were contacted by a solicitor whose firm was acting as the executor of their deceased client and were in the process of selling his house. The house was a modest Victorian semi which, at some point in the distant past, had been attached on its free side to an extension to the neighbouring community hall [1]. The hall had been sold to a developer and the solicitor had just found out that work had commenced to demolish the connecting extension [2], without the required Party Wall Notices being served first.

The solicitor needed our help and advice urgently so we set out to expedite our Party Wall appointment process and explained to him the Party Wall process moving forward in this case. That same morning, armed at that point with just an email instruction, we made contact with the equally newly appointed Building Owner’s surveyor to ensure that work was halted immediately pending an inspection by the surveyors.

As soon as possible after this, the two surveyors met on site to conduct a Schedule of Condition inspection on the house. The house was in rather a bad state, inside and out [3], and had been empty for some time but the removal of the extension roof had left the side wall of the house (the party wall) in an even more vulnerable condition [4].

A Party Wall Award was drawn up by the two surveyors that allowed redevelopment of the hall site to proceed [5] but with conditions in place to protect what had been the party wall. These conditions crucially included the manner in which the party wall was to be repaired, repointed and limewashed and left with a viable roof drainage system [6].

“Thank you very much for your prompt action.”