30,000 Notices and 9,000 Awards: What the Data Says About Party Wall Jobs

Every party wall surveyor has a feel for how neighbours react to a notice. Some consent by return, some go quiet for weeks, and some appoint their own surveyor before the ink is dry. Until now, that feel has rested on personal experience: a few thousand matters over a career, weighted towards your own postcode and your own clients.

We wanted to see what happens when you step back and look at the whole picture. So we analysed anonymised, aggregated data from more than 31,000 notices and 9,000 awards served through Party Wall PRO over the past ten years. The result is our new report, 30,000 Notices and 9,000 Awards. It’s one of the most detailed looks yet at how the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 works in practice.

Here’s a taste of what we found.

Most neighbours say no

If you suspect most adjoining owners dissent, you’re right. Roughly two in three neighbours dissent. More striking is what they do next: most of those who dissent appoint their own surveyor rather than agreeing to one.

Not every neighbour behaves the same way, though. One factor turns out to predict dissent better than the type of notice or even the region. It isn’t the one most surveyors would guess first. The report sets out the full breakdown, and the gap between the most and least cooperative groups is wide.

The 14-day clock is more theory than practice

The Act gives an adjoining owner 14 days to respond. In practice, fewer than half do. The median response time is longer than the statutory window, and a significant share of neighbours take more than a month.

The report also looks at what surveyors do about it, and how well it works. One simple step that’s already in every surveyor’s toolkit gets a good response rate when it’s used. It just isn’t used nearly as often as it could be.

The agreed surveyor route saves about a month

The difference between an agreed surveyor and a two-surveyor award is about a month at the median. That’s a number worth having to hand next time you explain the options to a building owner or an adjoining owner.

The report goes further and identifies the factors that stretch an award from a matter of weeks into many months. Some are obvious while others, such as the number of neighbours on a job and who those neighbours are, add more time than one might expect.

London is a different country

The capital behaves very differently from the rest of England and Wales. London neighbours are far more likely to appoint their own surveyor, and London awards take noticeably longer to reach. The report sets out how big that gap is, and how the geography of party wall work has shifted over the decade.

Timing matters more than you think

Party wall work has a clear seasonal rhythm, with a peak month, a quiet month and a big gap between them. There’s also a pattern in which month a notice is served and how quickly the award follows. If you advise clients on when to serve, or plan your own marketing and workload, this section is worth reading closely.

Five practical takeaways

The report ends with five practical ideas for surveyors, each tied to a number in the data. They cover pricing jobs by risk and chasing responses on a fixed timetable. None of them needs new tools or a change in professional approach. They’re ways to use evidence you can now point to.

How Party Wall PRO helps

This data exists because hundreds of surveyors run their matters through Party Wall PRO every year. They use it to prepare and serve notices, track responses and deadlines, issue 10-day letters, communicate with owners and produce awards. The aim is simple: less time on paperwork and chasing, more time on the professional work that matters. The insights in this report come from that day-to-day use, anonymised and aggregated so that no firm, client or property can be identified.

Download the full report

The full report includes the detailed figures, the trends since 2016, the factors that slow an award down and the five practical takeaways. It’s free to download.

Follow this link to download the report

About the author

Philippe Weyland is the founder of Party Wall PRO, specialist software for managing party wall jobs from notice to award. To see how it could save you weeks on your party wall jobs, start a free one-month trial at www.partywallpro.com with the code SDUK01.