My Neighbours Want ‘Extra’ Compensation For Enclosing Their Wall

Question

We are set to build an extension and side return and hope to use our neighbour’s wall. We have a party wall agreement with them from when they built their extension a few years ago but the wall is not on the boundary line, it is all within their land – back then we declined their request for the wall to sit on the boundary because we honestly had no intention at the time of ever doing an extension. However, for a number of reasons circumstances have changed and we have now decided to do this extension.

We have always understood that we have to pay 50 per cent of the current cost of their wall if we want to build on the wall but our neighbour seems to feel they should get additional compensation for the land that he feels he ‘lost’ when we refused him permission to build on the boundary line. I’ve seen no guidelines as to how this extra figure should be calculated – is it just an arbitrary figure?

Answer

As the wall was built entirely on your neighbour’s land you have no right to use it as part of you proposed extension – therefore you are relying on them giving you consent and the compensation is a matter for agreement between the owners. There is no guidance on this in the Act as it does not relate to a right given by the Act.