How Much Notice Do You Give for Party Wall Work?

Before certain building work near a shared boundary, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 requires you to give your neighbour written notice. Get the timing right and the job runs smoothly. Get it wrong and you can lose weeks. Here is how the notice periods work.

The two key periods

• Two months for work to a party wall or structure itself, cutting in beams, removing a chimney breast, or raising or rebuilding the wall. This is a party structure notice.
• One month for a new wall on the boundary (a line of junction notice), and for excavation near your neighbour's foundations (within three or six metres, depending on depth).

The notice must describe the work and give a proposed start date, and that date cannot fall earlier than the notice period above.

When the clock starts

The clock runs from the date your neighbour receives the notice, not the date you send it. Serve early: a neighbour can dissent or simply not reply, so it pays to serve well before you want to be on site.

What your neighbour can do

Your neighbour has 14 days to respond. They can consent, and work proceeds; or dissent and appoint a surveyor. If they don't reply within 14 days, a dispute is deemed to have arisen and the Act's surveyor process begins. What they cannot do is quietly block a lawful project, see what if a neighbour ignores a notice.

Get the notice right first time

A wrongly drafted or wrongly served notice is invalid, and you start the clock again. We prepare and serve party wall notices correctly across Worthing and West Sussex, on fixed fees agreed in writing. For free initial advice, call 01903 372418 or get in touch.