Loft conversion - Party Wall and schedule of condition

[devsdev]

Hi all,

Turning again to people who have had experience of loft conversions.

One of our neighbours has consented to our building of the loft and we're waiting on the reply form from the other neighbour (I'm not very concerned about getting their consent). However, I want to know whether we should engage our party wall surveyors to conduct a survey of each property and provide a written schedule of condition of their property along with photographs. According to the surveyors if we took that photos and noted the condition ourselves, then the validity of this may be questioned if any damage occurs and "it turns into a legal matter" and we try to claim for our neighbours.

Any thoughts or experience on this? The cost of the two surveys will be ?800+VAT which we hadn't budgeted for. Equally we would not want to compromise our future relationship with our neighbours in case damage occurs and we can't claim because we haven't had the survey done. Not sure if the surveyors are just being dodgy or genuine!

Thanks again

Dev

[Tommy1000]

Hi Dev,

We're in a similar situation - consent granted by one neighbour and the other side is council-owned, so we're having to go down the full surveyor and party wall award route for that side. Interestingly, the surveyor we've retained to do the council-owned side party wall stuff hasn't even suggested offering his services for a schedule of condition on the consenting side.

I don't know exactly what level of detail they would go into when producing the schedule part which would accompany the photos, but ?800+VAT does seem rather a lot to me. I'm not a party wall surveyor of course, however, I'd be surprised if you ran into problems with validity provided you went to a good amount of detail etc. And when I say that I mean take lots of photos, describe the current condition as accurately and in as much detail as possible and then, when you and the relevant neighbour are happy with that description and photographic evidence, both sign your schedule of condition (which references and annexes the photos) saying that it's an accurate reflection of the party wall from your neighbour's side as at [insert date]. And preferably get your signature independently witnessed. If you both then have a copy of that document, I'm hard-pressed to imagine why you might run into validity problems. Someone more knowledgable on these things might correct me though if I'm wrong here!

We get on well with our consenting neighbours, and trust them not to try and pull a fast one and claim we've caused damage when we haven't. So we haven't as yet even put in place a 'home-made' schedule of condition. I may just ask our surveyor his view on whether or not it's worthwhile - I'll re-post if I find out anything helpful/interesting.

[motorbird83]

Tommy, has it been difficult coordinating with the council / housing association? We are in the exact same situation and were about to dive in that side of things in the next week.

[Tommy1000]

motorbird, not difficult as such just time-consuming. We'd been hoping to start works before the 2 month period was up, at least by a couple of weeks anyway. Our surveyor served notice on the council, who then - after some time - appointed their own surveyor (which I understand they always do, rather than agreeing to use yours). They or their surveyor have not been difficult but have been doing things frustratingly slowly.

I think we're now just planning to start the works on the expiry of the 2 month notice period, after which point the party wall award / agreement will have to be done concurrently with the works...

Presumably you have a surveyor lined up?