Party walls – chimney removal
Before your neighbour carries out any work to remove a chimney from the shared wall between your 2 properties, he/she must give you notice of it.
The Notice needs to set out what type of work you wish to do, and how you are to do it, and over what period of time. The Notice needs to confirm that you will be responsible for any damage caused.
The Notice must be in writing and must give you sufficient time to consider what works are being proposed.
If you ignore the Notice, contrary to common belief and indeed logic, under the Party Walls Etc Act 1996, silence is deemed to be dissent, not consent.
That means that your neighbour cannot carry out any work without employing a Party Wall Surveyor. Equally you will need a Surveyor, which is usually paid for by the adjoining Owner.
The surveyors will get together and discuss the best way to remove the chimney stack so as not to cause any structural damage to the Party Wall, and to cause minimum cosmetic damage.
If they cannot agree on a way forward, a 3rd Surveyor can be appointed under the 1996 Act.
If he is carrying out work which would otherwise be notifiable, and no Notice has been served, and no agreement is in place, you need to ask him to stop work until a Party Wall Award has been published. If he ignores you, you need to seek advice urgently and in some instances an Injunction preventing him from continuing notifiable works will be appropriate.
Bear in mind with Party Wall matters and any other neighbor issues that “what goes around comes around”. Being difficult or ignoring the issue, putting your neighbor to expense for no good reason, is not a sensible way to operate. There may come a time in the future where you need your neighbour’s co-operation. Ill-feeling between neighbours is a big legal issue and a small issue can easily escalate into all sorts of unfriendly or even very hostile actions. Conversely, if you are genuinely concerned about works your neighbour may be carrying out, make sure you deal with the issue in an objective and constructive way, but utilize your rights as detailed above if your neighbor behaves as though they will do what they want when they want regardless of your concerns and disruption to you.
The writer is a Solicitor-Advocate, Partner and head of Litigation at Darlingtons, a member of the Pyramus and Thisbe Club, and an Associate Professor of Law at Brunel University.
