Next Door Is Building an Extension. Here’s What You’re Entitled To

The planning notice went up, the skip has arrived, and there’s a digger idling worryingly close to your fence. You don’t want a war. You’d just like to know someone is looking after your side of things.

5 min read  •  Party Wall Online

Good news: someone is. If your neighbour’s extension involves the shared wall, a wall at the boundary, or digging near your home, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 gives you a set of rights that exist whether or not your neighbour has mentioned them. Here’s the full list.

---

You’re Entitled to Proper Notice

Before any notifiable work starts, your neighbour must serve you a written party wall notice: two months ahead for work to the shared wall, one month for boundary walls and nearby excavation. Not a chat over the fence, not a note through the door from the builder. A proper notice, with the work described.

When it arrives, you have choices, and our guide to responding to a party wall notice walks through them. If the work has started and no notice ever came, that’s a different situation with its own remedies, covered in what happens when the Act is ignored.

Your Rights, In Full

• ✓
  A surveyor, normally at your neighbour’s expense If you dissent to the notice, a surveyor is appointed to look after the process. You can share one impartial Agreed Surveyor or appoint your own. Either way, the building owner normally pays the reasonable fees.
• ✓
  A record of your home before work starts The schedule of condition photographs and describes your property in advance, so any new damage is provable rather than arguable.
• ✓
  Repairs or compensation if damage happens If the works crack your plaster or worse, the Act entitles you to have it made good, or to compensation instead. No small claims court required.
• ✓
  Work done with reasonable care The award can set working methods and hours for the notifiable work, and requires your neighbour to avoid causing you unnecessary inconvenience.
• ✓
  Security for expenses on risky work For heavier projects such as basements, you can ask for money to be set aside before work starts, so an abandoned dig doesn’t become your problem.

And What You Can’t Do

Honesty time. The Act protects you; it doesn’t let you stop a lawful project. You can’t veto the work, charge for your cooperation, or use the process to relitigate the hedge dispute of 2019. If that’s disappointing, our guide to whether a neighbour can refuse a party wall agreement explains where the boundaries sit, from both sides of the fence.

The Act’s deal is simple: they get to build, you get to be protected while they do. Both halves of that deal are enforceable.

One Reassuring Note on Money

Being the neighbour in a party wall matter shouldn’t cost you anything. The building owner normally pays for the notices, the award, the schedule of condition and your surveyor’s reasonable fees. Your only real investment is a little attention: read what you’re sent, let the surveyor in for the inspection, and keep your copy of everything.

So let them build. Just make sure the paperwork that protects your home is in place before the first spade goes in.