The first contact

Two months before you lift a tool.

Published 2026-08-22 5 min read

The short answer

A party structure notice must be served at least two months before work starts, and an excavation notice one month. Ask about the neighbouring wall on the first call, not the week before.

He rings in March and wants it done in April. You look at the job, you have the week free, and everyone is happy until somebody notices that the wall being opened up is shared with next door.

At that point the calendar stops being yours. The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 sets out the notice periods, and they are not short: a party structure notice must, under section 3(2)(a), be served “at least two months before the date on which the proposed work will begin”.

Three notices, three different lead times

Two months is the one people have heard of, but it is not the only period in the Act. Building on the line of junction requires notice “at least one month before he intends the building work to start” under section 1(2). Excavating close to a neighbour’s foundations requires notice “at least one month before beginning to excavate” under section 6(5).

Which of them applies is a question about the specific wall and the specific hole, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. The useful part is knowing that the answer changes your start date by weeks, which is why it belongs at the beginning of the conversation rather than the end.

The start date is fixed by the notice, not the other way round. Counting backwards is the only order that works.

Silence next door is not agreement

Section 6(7) deals with what happens when the neighbour does nothing. If he does not serve a notice consenting “within the period of fourteen days beginning with the day on which the notice … was served, he shall be deemed to have dissented from the notice and a dispute shall be deemed to have arisen between the parties”.

So a neighbour who is away, or busy, or simply not interested produces the same outcome as one who objects. That is worth explaining to a customer early, because his mental model is almost certainly “they will probably be fine with it”, and being fine with it silently is not one of the options.

The notice can also go stale

One more thing to keep in the diary. Under section 3(2)(b) a party structure notice ceases to have effect if the work has not begun within twelve months of service and is not “prosecuted with due diligence”. Serving early to be safe and then letting the job slip a year undoes the work.

Five points and what each prevents. Our own reasoning, from where these jobs lose their start dates.
What the page says	What it prevents
That shared walls and close excavation carry notice periods	A start date agreed before anyone checked.
That you ask about the neighbouring wall on the first call	The discovery arriving in the week the materials do.
That a neighbour’s silence counts as dissent	A customer who is counting on “they won’t mind”.
That a notice can go stale after twelve months	An early notice quietly expiring during a delay.
Who prepares and serves the notice — you, him, or a surveyor	Both parties assuming the other one did it.

The timing block — copy it and set out your own part in the brackets

Heading, in his words: “When can you start?”
The question that comes first: “Before we agree a date: does the work touch a wall you share with a neighbour, or involve digging near their building? If so, the Party Wall etc. Act sets the earliest date we can start, not our diary.”
The periods, stated plainly: “A party structure notice must be served at least two months before work begins. Notices for building on the boundary line or for excavating near a neighbour’s foundations are at least one month.”
The bit customers get wrong: “If your neighbour does not reply within fourteen days, the Act treats that as dissent — a dispute is deemed to have arisen. Silence is not consent.”
What you do and do not do: “We [prepare and serve the notices / do not serve notices — that is for you or a party wall surveyor]. Either way we will tell you which applies before we quote a date.”
The expiry: “A party structure notice lapses if the work has not started within twelve months, so we plan the date backwards from when you actually want us there.”
The honest caveat: “Whether a notice is needed at all depends on your wall and your neighbour’s foundations. We will say what we think, and where it is not clear we will say that too.”

The last point matters more than it looks. This is an area where a confident wrong answer costs a customer money and a cautious honest one costs nothing, and the customer can tell the difference between the two long before a surveyor gets involved.

What this article does not do

It does not tell you which jobs need a notice. That turns on the wall, the excavation and the boundary, and no page written in advance can decide it. What it gives you is the shape of the calendar: two months, one month, fourteen days, twelve months — four numbers that between them decide when a job can realistically start.