Latest blog posts

Mild rises likely coming from greater Brexit certaintyRightmove have predicted a modest 2% rise over the course of 2020 for the UK, with larger gains expected in the North.This is mainly due to the Government's large majority and Brexit now confirmed for 31st January which should give both buyers and sellers more confidence to move in ... Read more >>

Soon after thoughts about carrying out some building work to a property have been formed, thoughts will often turn to planning permission requirements and how best to deal with them. Planning permission in one form or another will usually appear as a major milestone on most construction projects. With this in mind, it is useful to consider how the ... Read more >>

The Party Wall Act leaves it up to the surveyors to agree which of the owners should pay their fees (which must be reasonable) - in all normal circumstances that will be the owner benefitting from the works but what happens if those works do not proceed?With the uncertainty that has plagued the economy over the last couple of years it has ... Read more >>

This post was inspired by a question posed recently by a homeowner who was concerned about the neighbour’s new basement excavation and whether or not it would undermine her property.She wanted to know what precautions could be taken to ensure that the neighbour would dig under the party wall only and stop as soon as they had enough room to ... Read more >>

Having secured the Conservatives a 'stonking' 80 seat majority on Friday and having spent the weekend showing his gratitude to his new northern supporters, Boris Johnson's attention can now shift to delivering on the promises of his manifesto.Aside from Brexit, there are the headline-grabbing, 40 new hospitals, 20,000 new police officers and ... Read more >>

The common stereotype is that architects ‘draw pretty pictures’ of buildings.  That may be true – the presentation of information is important, but it only scratches the surface of our role.Our output includes both drawn and written information.  The drawings are in reality diagrams that record a complex and many layered process of ... Read more >>

It used to be common for party wall awards to include an obligation for the building owner to ‘maintain or cause contractor(s) to maintain adequate insurance against such risks and provide evidence of this upon demand by the adjoining owner’s surveyor contractor’ and this was generally interpreted as the relatively inexpensive Public ... Read more >>