PWA Can you build anything over a neighbour's property ?

[Spinny]

11 hours ago, dave1967 said:

Pwa is a legal requirement and if its been built incorrectly the planning team should act.

I very very much doubt that planning team will do anything at all. Is a PWA actually a planning condition anyway, or just some informational statement made.

I would have thought vanishingly small chance on planning doing anything. If someone, e.g. you complains, they may just comment back to you. But I think you have an unrealistic view of how planning works, and the pressures on council budgets etc.

 

It is up to you, but I'd have thought if you ever sell then solicitors questionnaire may highlight the issue.

 

What is being done is wrong and illegal, and they probably know it and you are being suckered.

 

Take a close look at the planning drawings. Write a formal letter of complaint to planning (why did you not comment/complain when they applied for planning permission ?) stating their planning approval breaches the law. Write to the planning ombudsman to complain about the planning decision. None of this is likely to get it knocked down now. However this could get you some financial compensation, and should help ensure that planning don't keep ignoring boundary issues and approving plans which are illegal. Talk to your councillor too.

 

Writing to your neighbour to inform them you have become aware that they are in breach of the PWA, and are trespassing on your property, should result in them seeking to comply with the PWA by sending you a PWA notice and seeking your agreement after the fact. Then you can negotiate something - e.g. their agreement in the PWA that the overhang can be removed if someone at your property wishes to build there. Or their agreement you can fix things into the wall, or modifications to reduce or remove the overhang, or conditions that the gutter is cleaned annually at their cost. If you do nothing, what might happen next ? A nice boiler outlet or extractor cored out through the wall ? A waste pipe discharging onto your property ? A second storey ?

 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

 

 

 

[dave1967]

• development that has not been carried out in accordance with planning permission
• failure to comply with a condition related to planning permission

[dave1967]

We didn't complain as we felt it was pointless.it does not affect our light and  believed it would be 100% on their side. As it is they cant complete it without access to my property which is denied as it will cause further overhang.

[Spinny]

Dave, nobody is going to check on planning conditions.

 

And is it definitely a formal condition in the approval letter, or just advisory ?

 

In general, unless there is a huge breach of planning, like building without it, making it 3 times bigger, putting a bright yellow roof on etc then planning will not know or take their own action. Someone has to complain - and the only someone that is impacted is you.

Edited May 31 by Spinny

[dave1967]

We didn't complain as we felt it was pointless.it does not affect our light and  believed it would be 100% on their side. As it is they cant complete it without access to my property which is denied as it will cause further overhang.

[dave1967]

At the end of the day. They cant finish it.

[Spinny]

 

5 minutes ago, dave1967 said:

As it is they cant complete it without access to my property which is denied as it will cause further overhang.

Good point, have you told them that ?

Part of the PWA is to set out terms for access to your land - which you are obliged to give and cannot refuse - but the PWA sets out arrangements in the agreement document or Party Wall Award for such access e.g. neighbour notifying taking access 14 days in advance, limits on how much of your land they take access over, hours of working on your land etc etc.

 

Unfortunately my experience remains poor with a game of secret squirrels, chinese whispers, and deliberate obfuscation and ambiguity now going on through 2 party wall surveyors and a bad actor architect. There seems to be more interest in playing silly buggers for the sake of it than establishing a clear legal agreement.

 

[Spinny]

1 hour ago, dave1967 said:

At the end of the day. They cant finish it.

Have you told them that ? Have they asked for access ?

When people behave badly it destroys trust and there is no way to tell quite where things stop. I may well be paranoid but presumably someone could possibly climb on the extension roof to nail on a fascia board and attach a gutter from above. Or simply wait until you go out or go away, pop over the fence and nail on some soffit, and you will come back to find it finished.

So if you are relying on them needing access, or needing to ask for access, as a mechanism for resolving their overhang you might be sadly disappointed. Building Control might, and only might, look to see if there is a gutter down the side, and might, or might not say they won't sign it off without one.

 

I don't think you can just be passive here and do an ostrich, and expect that a neighbour that ignores the law in one way won't just ignore it in other ways, or assume that a third party is going to get involved and rescue the situation if you just keep quiet and don't say anything. People deliberately do illegal things every day and nothing ever happens - and ''authorities'' frequently don't notice, pretend not to notice, or actively look the other way.

 

Once someone raises it, ''authorities'' have to pay some attention, even if just to deny they can do anything. You have to claim your rights, you have to speak, you have to throw the stone to get the pond of indifference, idleness, incompetence, vested interests and expediency to ripple.

[dave1967]

At the end of the day. They cant finish it.

[dave1967]

See what happens, builder has  been told no more access and no gutters to be fitted due to trespass. 

They cant fit the gutters from there side, pretty sure of that.

[Temp]

Think I mentioned this before.. There is no penalty for breaching the Party Wall Act. At worse a judge might take a dim view of them knowingly breaching the act if it went to court for other reasons.

 

Personally if their 4" of overhang isnt where anyone on your side would be likely to build an extension I wouldn't get too worked up about it.

 

The council might well just approve their deviation from the plans or ignore your complaints. Councils don't have money to get involved in sort of thing. In some areas they don't even have full time planning officers and share them with other counties.  If a wind farm is proposed in what the planners consider to be the wrong place they have to rely on neighbours to raise tens of thousands of pounds to pay for landscape experts and photography/computer modelling for the appeal. The planners can't afford any of that stuff.

 

 

[Temp]

I suppose it might be worth checking your house insurance to see if that has legal cover but they won't fight it for you unless they think they will at least get their costs back.

[dave1967]

See what happens, builder has  been told no more access and no gutters to be fitted due to trespass. 

They cant fit the gutters from there side, pretty sure of that.

Edited Sunday at 09:15 by dave1967
Wrong topic

[dave1967]

I think an integrated gutter is the answer then we would accept a couple of inches overhang. Yes we have legal cover.

[Spinny]

@G and J and everybody,

 

If you have ever had a Party Wall Agreement or Award, please could you tell me whether it defined the position of the build line in the agreement, and exactly how it defined this: e.g.

1) By stating measurements from known fixed points which would not be changed by the building work (e.g. distance from an existing building, triangulated measurements, professional surveyors survey measurements)

2) By measurements made by the PWS using a tape measure, and if so measurements taken from what reference points

3) By measuring from planning drawings with a defined scale but no stated measurements

4) By planning drawings annotated and labelled with measurements to a boundary or building 

5) By architect construction drawings labelled with the specific measurements

6) Only by describing measurements w.r.t a feature that will be dug up and removed when the work starts

7) In some other way, if so what

 

Many thanks for any and all responses given my situation.

 

Edited Tuesday at 20:29 by Spinny

[G and J]

Ours referred to items 4 and 5.

 

However our context was different in that we are replicating the footprint of a previous structure, so we were also able to take actual measurements to the boundaries prior to commencement (we have done this for our own peace of mind).

[Spinny]

Thanks I am being offered only 6 and photocopied sections out of planning drawings/a cross-section which are therefore unscalable and have no marked dimensions for anything on them. I am being told that is acceptable and the PWS and the PWA do not define where the build occurs !

 

Whole thing becoming insane.

[G and J]

1 hour ago, Spinny said:

I am being told that is acceptable and the PWS and the PWA do not define where the build occurs !

I think technically they are correct because the pwa is more about the " how "

 

I.e. how deep foundations.....the agreement is not about the " wall" in this case the boundary, but rather how what's happening is going to affect it.

[Mr Punter]

16 hours ago, Spinny said:

@G and J and everybody,

 

If you have ever had a Party Wall Agreement or Award, please could you tell me whether it defined the position of the build line in the agreement, and exactly how it defined this: e.g.

1) By stating measurements from known fixed points which would not be changed by the building work (e.g. distance from an existing building, triangulated measurements, professional surveyors survey measurements)

2) By measurements made by the PWS using a tape measure, and if so measurements taken from what reference points

3) By measuring from planning drawings with a defined scale but no stated measurements

4) By planning drawings annotated and labelled with measurements to a boundary or building 

5) By architect construction drawings labelled with the specific measurements

6) Only by describing measurements w.r.t a feature that will be dug up and removed when the work starts

7) In some other way, if so what

 

Many thanks for any and all responses given my situation.

 

 

I have had these both as owner and adjacent owner.  They do not define boundaries, although some attached drawings may indicate them.  They often have photos of the boundary areas.  Is someone after nicking your land?  You could get a topo survey done that would set the current location of everything.

[Spinny]

I am considering a survey but have been told it will be legally worthless unless carried out by a RICS surveyor ?

 

I get told contradictory things at different times and by different PWS's. Whole process seems completely broken and seems designed to create disputes and not avoid them. Obviously with no definition of where the neighbour is going to build they could build anywhere they like and any disagreement about where they build is completely unresolvable. Once the land is dug up there will be no features or anything to go by. Even the most simple of questions such as what ''capping'' are you using is rejected as' you have no right to know' and 'we are not telling anyone'. Whole thing appears to be a mechanism for bullying your neighbour and stealing any land you fancy and no-one can stop you.

[Mr Punter]

Mostly boundaries are defined by buildings, walls, fences, hedges, ditches and roads.  How much land do you think they are planning on stealing?

[Spinny]

I have no idea. I just know that once the boundary features like a wall and fence above are all removed there will be no way to know where it was. The PWA will create a huge dispute by including undimensioned drawings purporting to show the width of an extension up to a boundary line which has been destroyed.

 

The issue is that I have a side access passage along the outside of my property, purposely designed to be just wide enough to take stuff through (wheel barrows, wheelybins, lawnmowers, bicycles, a small minidigger, a wheelchair etc). So should the neighbour's build be  even an inch or two onto my land it will create real access restrictions on my property.

 

The owner has taken the adversarial and antagonistic route throughout, never once choosing to tackle any aspect by just talking to their neighbour. And there is no justifiable reason for them not to just be reasonable. The boundary isn't parallel to their outer wall, yet they plan to build angular rooms just so they can follow the boundary and don't loose a few square inches. Their outer wall seems to be 350mm wide when if they were so desperate for inches it could easily be 300mm wide and parallel. It is as though they are more concerned with intimidating us than the value of their own extension.

[dave1967]

Well

As spinney predicted the builder after being told no access to our garden sneeked in at about 8.30 to do gutters. Luckily I had erected a camera and spotted them. They the tried again by tying to sneek behind bushes.

Edited 3 hours ago by dave1967
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