Party wall notice
- Notices to serve in this job
- 4
- Days left to serve a party structure notice
- 26
- Days left to serve an adjacent excavation notice
- 57
Every answer on this site comes out of the figures you type and the method printed beside them: your start date, your adjoining owners, your rooms and elevations, your surveyor's hourly rate. Where a period comes from the Act rather than from you, the section is linked so you can read it. Statutory periods are counted at their longest, two calendar months as 62 days and one as 31, so a date this site gives you is never short of what the Act asks.
A party wall notice is the letter that has to reach your neighbour before the work starts, and the Act is specific about which letter, how long before, and what happens if nobody replies. There are three of them and a job can need more than one: a party structure notice for work on the shared wall itself, a line of junction notice for a new wall on the boundary, and an adjacent excavation notice for digging near next door's foundations. Each has its own lead time, each is served on every adjoining owner rather than on the house, and none of them is valid a day late. What follows is the order the job actually runs in, and the worksheet under it counts the dates from your own start date.
Open the Party wall notice template Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Work out which notice, and how many of them
The work decides the notice. Cutting into the shared wall, raising it or taking out a chimney breast on it is a party structure notice under section 3. A brand new wall on or at the boundary where nothing stands is a line of junction notice under section 1. Digging near the neighbour's building and going deeper than its foundations is an adjacent excavation notice under section 6. A loft conversion with a rear extension often needs two of them, and each goes to every adjoining owner separately, so a flat above and a flat below are two notices, not one.
Count back from the start date, not forward from today
A party structure notice has to be served at least two months before the work begins; a line of junction notice and an adjacent excavation notice at least one month. Those periods run from service, not from posting, so allow for the post as well. Counting back from the day the builder wants to start is the only way to see whether you still have room, and it is the calculation people get wrong, because the notice also lapses if the work has not begun within twelve months of it being served.
Expect the silence, and plan for the award
An adjoining owner has fourteen days to consent in writing. Say nothing and the Act deems a dispute to have arisen, which means surveyors and an award, whether or not anybody is actually annoyed. That is the fork the whole job turns on: a consent keeps it a letter, a dissent makes it an award with a schedule of condition attached and fees on both sides that you will usually be paying. Serving early, and serving something a neighbour can read, is the cheapest thing you can do.
What a building owner asks before running the Party wall notice
Does Abutly serve the notice for me? No. It counts the dates, tells you which notices the job needs and how many, and keeps what you served against the address afterwards. Writing and serving the notice is yours, or your surveyor's. Nothing here is legal advice and nothing here is an award.
What happens if I have already started the work? The Act has no retrospective notice: a notice served now runs its period from now, and work already done is not made lawful by it. What people usually do is stop, take advice and agree something with the neighbour, and the schedule of condition becomes far more important because there is no record of what the property looked like beforehand.
Do I need a surveyor to serve a notice? Not to serve one. A building owner can write and serve their own notices, and many do. A surveyor becomes necessary once an adjoining owner dissents or is deemed to have dissented, because the award is written by surveyors appointed under section 10. This site does not find you one and does not recommend one.
Will it keep the address, beyond the Party wall notice?
Tell us about the job and the wall, and a person who works on Abutly answers by email. We will not tell you whether your work is notifiable, appoint a surveyor for you or recommend one, because that is not what this product is.