Party wall notice checklist

Read the document to make sure it meets your needs and that you’ve provided all of the necessary information about the properties and the intended works. Particularly, make sure you’ve created the correct notice for the type of work you intend to carry out. 

If you’re carrying out more than one type of work, make sure that you make separate notices to inform neighbours of each type of work.

Remember that, if you have any questions, you can Ask a lawyer for advice or contact a surveyor using The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICs’) Find a Surveyor service.

If you’re making a 3-metre or 6-metre notice (ie you’re planning to make excavations) or you’re making a party structure notice and proposing special foundations (ie foundations for which an assemblage of beams or rods is used to distribute a load), you must attach plans of the proposed excavations and/or works. 

You may also choose to attach plans in other circumstances to better illustrate your planned works.

Sign your Party Wall Notice. If there are multiple joint owners of your property, all of them should sign the notice unless one owner is authorised to sign for all joint owners. 

You can sign your Party Wall Notice by either:

• signing in print, by printing a copy of the document and signing and dating it, or

• signing online using RocketSign

You must correctly serve (ie deliver) your all Party Wall Notice. To serve a Party Wall Notice, the property owner must either:

• deliver it to the recipient (ie the relevant adjoining owner) in person

• send it by post to the recipient’s usual or last-known residential address or place of business in the UK, or 

• if the recipient is a body corporate (eg a company), deliver it to the secretary or clerk at the registered or principal office

Party Wall Notices may alternatively be served to an email address specified by the recipient, but only if the recipient has previously stated that they are willing to receive such notices by electronic communication and this statement has not been withdrawn. 

If you do not know the adjoining owner’s name, you can address your Party Wall Notice to ‘the owner’. You must then serve it either by delivering it to a person at the property by hand or, if nobody appropriate can be found at the property, by affixing it to an obvious part of the property.

A copy of your Party Wall Notice will be stored automatically in your Rocket Lawyer account ‘Dashboard’.

You should also download and securely store a copy of your Party Wall Notice for your records. 

You should also securely store any proof of service, for example: 

• Royal Mail receipts. You should use a recorded (ie tracked) delivery service if you’re serving your Party Wall Notice by post

• signed and dated statements from witnesses that watched you hand deliver a Party Wall Notice. A witness should sign a note stating the time and date that a Notice was delivered. A witness should be independent (ie somebody who doesn’t have an interest in the works and who isn’t ‘on your side’). They should also: 

  • be at least 18 years old

  • have mental capacity, and

  • not be related to you

• emails or text messages from recipients acknowledging that they’ve received the Notice

• read receipts from your service email, if you serve a Party Wall Notice by email

Also securely store any relevant communications that you receive from adjoining owners. These may include written consent to proceed with works (eg a completed and signed copy of the Acknowledgement of Notice form attached to your Party Wall Notice), communications expressing a refusal to consent, or counter-notices.