For adjoining owners

The schedule of condition.
The document damage claims turn on.

A dated photographic and written record of your property, taken before your neighbour's works begin. It is unglamorous, it takes a couple of hours, and it is the single most valuable thing the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 gives an adjoining owner. Because when a crack appears eight months later, it is the only thing that settles the argument.

Arrange yours. Free to you Your rights explained

Why it matters

Damage claims are won and lost on evidence, not on fairness.

Almost every disputed party wall damage claim reduces to one question: was that there before?

Without a schedule, that question has no good answer. You will say the crack is new. The contractor will say the building is Victorian and every Victorian house has cracks. Neither of you can prove it, and the party with the burden of proof is you.

With a schedule, the question answers itself. Either the defect is in the dated record or it is not. The argument stops being about memory and starts being about a document, which is exactly where an adjoining owner wants it.

What ours covers

Every room that could be affected, walls, ceilings, cornices, floors, skirtings and finishes, not just the rooms against the party wall.
External elevations. Brickwork, render, stucco, pointing, parapets, chimney stacks, rainwater goods and boundary walls.
Existing defects recorded openly, including pre-existing cracks, with location and width. Recording them protects your neighbour as much as it protects you, and a schedule that pretends a house is perfect is worthless to everyone.
Photographs keyed to written notes, numbered and dated, so any individual observation can be found again in two years without reading the whole document.
Drives, paths, garden structures and anything else within the zone of influence of an excavation.
Annexed to the Award, so it is part of a binding document rather than a file note.

Quality varies

Not all schedules are worth the paper.

A schedule of condition is only as good as the inspection behind it, and a thin one gives false comfort. You think you are protected right up until the moment you need to be.

Twenty photographs and a page

A terraced house generates a lot more than twenty photographs if the inspection was thorough. Sparse coverage is not efficiency. It is gaps, and gaps favour whoever is denying the claim.

Exteriors skipped

Ground movement shows in external brickwork, pointing, render and boundary walls long before it shows inside. A schedule that only records interiors misses where the evidence usually appears first.

No crack widths

'Minor cracking noted' is not a record. Cracks are recorded with location and width so that widening can be demonstrated later, which is the whole mechanism of a movement claim.

Undated or unkeyed images

Photographs that cannot be tied to a date and a specific written observation are difficult to rely on if the matter is ever seriously contested.

Taken after work started

Once scaffolding is up and openings are formed, the property has already been exposed to the works. A schedule from that point records a moving target.

Nobody walked the boundary

Where excavation is involved, the drive, paths, garden walls, outbuildings and drainage runs matter. These are exactly the elements that move first and are recorded least.

If the schedule has already been done and you are not confident in it

Talk to us. Where a schedule is plainly inadequate, the surveyors can agree that further recording is needed before works proceed. And that is a far easier conversation to have before the first brick is cut than after the plaster starts cracking.

Schedule of condition questions

Who pays for the schedule of condition?

The building owner, as part of the reasonable surveying costs under section 11. It is prepared for the adjoining owner's protection but funded by the person carrying out the works, because the works are for their benefit.

When must it be done?

Before any notifiable work begins, that is the entire point. A schedule taken after the scaffolding is up and the first wall has been opened records a property that has already been exposed to the works, which materially weakens it. If your neighbour's programme is pressing, the schedule is the thing that should not be compressed.

What if my neighbour will not let me inspect their side?

You do not need to. A schedule of condition for an adjoining owner records your property, not theirs. Your surveyor inspects your rooms, your walls, your ceilings and the external elevations you can see. Access to the building owner's property is a separate matter dealt with under section 8.

Is a schedule of condition the same as a structural survey?

No. A structural survey diagnoses and advises on the condition of a building. A schedule of condition simply records it, in photographs and words, at a fixed date, without opinion about cause or significance. That neutrality is what makes it useful evidence later.

What if damage appears that was not in the schedule?

That is the situation it is designed for. If a crack appears after the works that is not in the dated record taken before them, the inference is straightforward and the building owner's duty to make good under the Award is engaged. Without the schedule, you would be arguing that the crack is new against a contractor saying it always looked like that.

Get your property recorded properly, before anything starts.

If your neighbour has served notice, the schedule of condition is yours by right and paid for by them. It takes a couple of hours and it is the thing you will be glad of if anything goes wrong.

The building owner normally pays your surveyor's reasonable fees
A named surveyor on your case from start to finish
We will tell you honestly if you do not need us

Appoint us as your surveyor Talk to us first, free or call 01174420259

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.

The schedule of condition.The document damage claims turn on.