The short answer
Yes, but timing is everything. Your leverage as an adjoining owner is at its greatest before a dispute formally arises. At that point you can talk directly to the building owner about timing, working hours, access and protections, and you hold two useful bargaining chips: your willingness to consent, and your willingness to agree a single surveyor. Once you appoint your own surveyor, you largely lose that leverage, because the matter passes to the surveyors and is determined by an award on statutory principles — not by negotiation between you and your neighbour.
Why it matters
The party wall process is deliberately not a negotiation once it is under way: the surveyors decide the award impartially, applying the Act, and your personal preferences carry weight only so far as they are reasonable and within the Act. So the window for genuine give-and-take is early, while the building owner still needs your cooperation. Used well, your consent — or your agreement to a single agreed surveyor — can be the thing that secures sensible working hours, considerate access, extra protection, or simply a better working relationship. Hand that leverage away by appointing a second surveyor at the first opportunity, and you are left raising concerns through a process rather than negotiating an outcome. You can still ask your surveyor to press for reasonable terms, but it is not the same as the leverage you held at the start.
What to do now
- Engage early, while the building owner still needs your cooperation.
- Use your consent, or your agreement to a single surveyor, as your bargaining chip.
- Settle timing, hours, access and protection by agreement before a dispute crystallises.
- Appoint your own surveyor only when agreement genuinely is not possible.
Common mistakes
- Appointing a surveyor immediately and giving away your leverage.
- Waiting until the award stage to raise things that could have been agreed early.
- Treating the statutory process as if it were a negotiation — it is not.
When to call Coburns
If you have a notice and want to reach a sensible arrangement with your neighbour, we will help you use your position early — before it hardens into a formal dispute.