K. Perkins v Sheffield City Council [2016]

Abstract

Thankfully, party wall court cases are relatively low in number, which may be attributed to their prescriptive nature thus operating within well-defined parameters. This means that when the rules are followed, there is little room for error and the parties (often represented by their surveyors) can deal amicably with the relevant matters. However, periodically, unwarranted deviations from the Party Wall Act result in disputes with unpredictable results. The case described in this paper, which was meant to be no more than a routine party wall dispute, illustrates how reckless deviation from a party wall award could result in legal proceedings causing loss of faith in law, undue stress to the adjoining owner and waste of parties’ resources. From start to completion the process took over 15 months and involved three separate in-house lawyers, a barrister, three court hearings (involving two district judges and a deputy district judge) and an inordinate amount of the adjoining owner’s surveyor’s time. As it is often promulgated, there are no clear winners in such cases and even a seemingly outright winner may have lost something through the process.