Consenting takes thirty seconds and ends the process. Dissenting takes a phone call and brings in a surveyor, a schedule of condition and a binding Award, normally at your neighbour's expense. Neither is automatically right, but only one of them is reversible, and it is not the one people usually pick.
Consent is not a trap, and plenty of adjoining owners are right to give it. But the two routes are not close substitutes, and the covering letter with your notice will not have spelled this out.
| If you consent | If you dissent | |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule of condition | None, unless you arrange and pay for one yourself. | Prepared as standard and annexed to the Award, at the building owner's cost. |
| Party Wall Award | None. There is no document governing the works. | A binding Award setting out scope, method, hours, access and protection. |
| Working hours and access | Whatever your neighbour and their builder decide. | Fixed by the Award, including whether anyone may come onto your land. |
| If damage occurs | An ordinary civil claim, funded and proved by you, with no dated record of the 'before'. | The building owner must make good. The surveyors determine it under the Award. |
| Design scrutiny | Nobody reviews the structural design on your behalf. | Your surveyor reads the drawings and calculations with your property in mind. |
| If something goes wrong on site | You are negotiating directly with your neighbour and their builder. | You telephone your surveyor, who deals with it professionally. |
| Cost to you | Nil. | Normally nil. The building owner pays the reasonable fees of both surveyors. |
| Can you reverse it | No. Consent is final for that notice. | Not applicable, dissenting keeps every option open. |
The asymmetry worth noticing
We would rather tell you that you do not need us than take an instruction you did not need to give.
You may hear a version of this from your neighbour, their builder, or the surveyor they have already engaged.
It is worth understanding why. Consent removes the second surveyor, the Award and the schedule of condition, which lowers the building owner's costs and shortens their programme. That is a real saving, for them. It saves you nothing, because you were never going to be paying.
None of which means your neighbour is acting in bad faith. Most are not; they are being told by their own side that consent is the smooth option, and it is. But the person urging you to consent has an interest in the answer, and you are entitled to take ten minutes and a second opinion before deciding. That opinion costs you nothing here.
No, and the word does more damage than the act. 'Dissent' in the Act does not mean objecting to your neighbour's plans. It means electing to have the works governed by an Award rather than proceeding informally. Most building owners' surveyors expect it, and many building owners prefer it, because an Award protects them too: it fixes the scope, records the starting condition and limits arguments later.
No. Consent is final for that notice. If your neighbour later changes the works materially, that may require a fresh notice which you can respond to differently. But you cannot withdraw a consent you have given because the work turned out noisier or messier than you expected.
Not entirely, but it changes the route and makes it much harder. Without an Award you have no schedule of condition and no surveyor mechanism, so a claim becomes an ordinary civil dispute in nuisance or negligence. Which you fund yourself and have to prove yourself, without a dated record of what your property looked like beforehand. Under an Award, the building owner's duty to make good is built in and the surveyors resolve it.
You can ask, and some building owners will agree voluntarily. But you are asking for a favour rather than exercising a right, you have no say over who prepares it or how thorough it is, and there is no Award making it binding. If a schedule of condition is what you want, dissenting is the reliable way to get one.
It will cost them more than consent. That is true and it is why the pressure gets applied. But the Act deliberately puts that cost on the person carrying out the works, and the delay is largely within their control: an Award is usually agreed in two to four weeks, and it moves faster when their side provides drawings and structural details promptly. Being told that protecting your home is unreasonable is a sales position, not a legal one.
Read us the notice and describe the works. We will tell you which route we would take if it were our house, and why, with no obligation and nothing to pay.
No card details. No obligation. Nothing is final until you sign the appointment. A member of our office team reads every message, and a surveyor replies, usually within one working day.
If you dissent, the next decision is who acts for you.
What you give up by consenting, explained properly.
The binding document dissenting gets you, clause by clause.
