Party Wall Appointment
Sutton, London SM1
(London Borough of Sutton)
Close to Carshalton and Epsom. Within the catchment of our Croydon office.
Background: The works required cutting into the ceiling joists above the top floor flats in order to remove fixtures and in order to fix a safety deck the ceiling joists. The works also involved exposing the Party Structure.
We were appointed by the building owner. The adjoining owners of the top floor flats did not wish to appoint the building owner's Surveyor as Agreed Surveyor and instead appointed their own Surveyor. In common with good practise all the leaseholders adjoining the property appointed the same Surveyor which resulted in the involvement of two Surveyors.
There were three top floor flats in each of the two blocks.
The works involved adding an additional floor within of roof spaces of two blocks at the development.
Conclusion:
Prior to the works commencing, the engineer undertook some investigative work including removing some bricks from various locations on the elevations to check whether the wall ties were sufficiently robust to allow the walls to support an additional floor. The result of the investigation was that the wall ties were in fact failing and retrofitting of wall ties was required.
Once the works to add an additional floor were underway, the staircase was extended upwards. This exposed a weakness in the ceiling that required a re-design of the steels and hence, a Further Award was drafted and served to cover those additional works.