The Party Wall Act and boundary disputes: An uneasy and often costly co-existence

Every day, up and down the country there are a large number of party wall cases that require resolving. There are, however, a few cases among them that, due to historical disagreements between neighbours, mean that the adjoining owners may not want party wall works to proceed. Boundary dispute claims often prevent such developments from taking place in the first place. If, prima facie, such instances are treated with some credence, with injunctive actions to follow, the county courts are inundated with such cases and may not be able to deal with them swiftly. In boundary disputes, building owners may be faced with long delays, However, in the event of adjoining owners wishing to sell their properties in future, obligation for disclosure of boundary disputes would. It is essential that when boundary disputes are made, the disputes are considered alongside the party wall process and ideally outside the ambit of the courts, perhaps through expert mediation to evaluate the validity of the allegations made and rectify the misunderstandings. This paper analyses a boundary dispute in which no amount of diplomacy could deter a disgruntled adjoining owner from stopping the building process by declaring that administration of the party wall process was null and void until the disputed boundary matter has first been resolved.