Practical guidance on causation, compensation, making good, schedules of condition, repair costs and pre-existing defects.
Yes, where the building owner is required by the Act to make good damage. Section 11(8) gives the adjoining owner the right to require the expense of making good to be determined and paid instead of having the building owner carry out the repair.
The aim is to compensate for the loss caused by the relevant works, not to fund unrelated improvement or cure every pre-existing defect. Repair scope and quantum therefore need a causation analysis that separates new damage from existing condition and avoids unjustified betterment.
The Act protects adjoining owners and occupiers against unnecessary inconvenience, and section 7(2) provides compensation for loss or damage resulting from work executed in pursuance of the Act. Ordinary unavoidable disruption is not automatically a compensable claim; the facts, causation and any specific statutory allowance matter.
No provision of the Act requires three quotations. Multiple comparable quotations can be useful evidence of a reasonable repair cost, but the real questions are causation, appropriate repair scope and reasonable quantum.
Record the damage promptly and distinguish damage caused by the statutory works from pre-existing defects. Section 7(2) can require compensation for loss or damage resulting from work executed in pursuance of the Act, and section 11(8) can allow payment instead of making good where that remedy applies.
First establish the source and cause. If the water penetration results from work executed under the Act, statutory compensation or making-good provisions may apply; if it arises from non-Act work, ordinary property, nuisance, negligence or contractual remedies may be relevant instead.
A Schedule of Condition is evidence, not a conclusive legal test. Damage can still be proved by photographs, videos, contemporaneous messages, expert evidence and the physical pattern of damage; equally, the schedule may help show that a defect already existed.
The absence of a Schedule of Condition does not prevent a damage claim. It simply removes one useful source of pre-work evidence, so causation and prior condition must be established from other reliable material.
Section 7(2) covers loss or damage resulting from work executed in pursuance of the Act. Other provisions can apply to particular situations, including payment instead of making good under section 11(8) and a fair allowance for disturbance and inconvenience where premises are laid open in the circumstances covered by section 11(6).
A person claiming compensation normally needs evidence that loss or damage occurred and was caused by the relevant works. A Schedule of Condition can be important evidence, but neither its presence nor absence automatically decides causation.
Where qualifying repair, rebuilding, underpinning or thickening is necessary because of defect or want of repair, sections 11(4) and 11(5) can require the expense to be shared by reference to each owner's use of the wall and responsibility for the defect. It is not automatically the building owner's cost merely because they initiate the work.