"aboleth" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm planning a loft conversion. It will require two steel joists
across the party walls of our terraced house. I've given the
neighbours party wall act letters and it's not going smoothly!

One of them is saying they want to have the wall surveyed. This seems
fair enough, but who pays for the survey? Is it just me, because I'm
the person doing the work? Seems a bit unfair as it gives a grumpy
neighbour the chance to cause me unnecessary costs. A chap up the road
had this situation and his neighbour insisted on using the most
expensive surveyor in town.

On the other side, the neighbour has just accepted an offer on her
flat. She doesn't now want to say yes to the party wall notice because
she will not be here when the work is done. She's also concerned with
putting off her buyer. As I understand it the party wall act is
nothing to do with this - she is the current owner and she is meant to
either say yes or go into dispute with me over it. It's up to her
buyer as to whether this affects the sale, but as long as all is
disclosed there should be no problem. Anyway, she's delaying, which
under the act automatically means we go into dispute after 2 weeks.
More costs, but what would a surveyor say about this anyway?!?

Any advice about how to deal with these issues?

The PW Act is basically toothless in that if you invoke it you end up paying
lots of money but if you ignore it it isn't retrospective. Just go ahead and
do the work, preferably while the neighbours are away and make sure you
don't damage their property in the process. If you give people PW notice of
course they'll want a surveyor to safeguard their interests at your expense
but if you just go ahead they'll have no idea how to take out an injunction
to stop you or want to pay the costs involved. Once the work is done your
only liability is for damages caused but you always faced those anyway.