Can a party wall agreement be verbal? It can, but it wouldn’t be enforceable. So the answer is no.
Under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 which governs party wall matters in England and Wales, party wall agreements, also known as party wall awards, must be in writing to be valid and enforceable.
The party wall award is an agreement between the owners on how to conduct the works and how any potential dispute will be handled. If you want to find out more about party wall agreements, feel free to read this short article.
Before worrying about whether the party wall award needs to be in writing you will first need to send notices to your neighbour(s). The party wall notices also need to be in writing and cannot be verbal.
The party wall notices kick start the process set up by the party wall act. These notices need to include certain information in order to be valid and enforceable. You can ask a surveyor to draft the party wall notice for a fee or you can do it yourself.
Your neighbour will have to respond to such notice(s) whether they agree to the works or they disagree to them. This, again, cannot be done verbally. In the case of a dissent, your neighbour will need to either appoint an agreed surveyor (one surveyor acting for both parties impartially) or a surveyor of its own. Your surveyor and their surveyor will then appoint a “third surveyor” just in case they cannot agree on something. Don’t worry, that third surveyor is not often called upon.
If you worry about the cost of surveyors and drafting a party wall agreement in particular, feel free to read this article on who pays for party wall surveyors.
To help you save money on the whole process, we developed a tool to help you generate party wall notices that are valid and bullet proof.
Try it here.