Landlord building work - Compensation?

[teknokid]

I'm just looking to gauge the general feel on this, as I'm sure there are a number of tenants/landlords on OCUK and someone may have gone through exactly this.

Essentially, I live in a basement flat with a split garden - we have the ~2m nearest the house, the remainder belongs to upstairs which is accesses via stairs which travel over my section of the garden.

The landlord owns the whole building, and wants to build an office in the section of garden that belongs to the upstairs part of the building (he currently uses upstairs as an office, leasing the basement only).

He's advised me that we will be disturbed via noise etc as they've got to do some heavy digging for ~3 weeks, plus they have to run waste pipes across my garden, so will have to dig up some of that etc.

All of this is directly behind the bedrooms in my flat, one of which is an office (currently getting a lot of use with WFH and the girlfriend is working from the flat too).

In total he's expecting the complete works to take 6 months - all of which will remove all my privacy at the back of the flat, cover it in dust and create a hell of a racket (the work is within ~5m of my rear wall/windows).

What would people expect to be fair compensation for this?

The landlords made an offer that equates to 4.5% over the 6 months, but to me that seems quite pitiful considering we won't be able to use our outside space due to dust/noise etc and WFH will become far less enjoyable.

What are the thoughts GD?

Thank you!

 

[teknokid]

I'd be curious to know what made him choose 4.5%. At a guess, he wanted not to go all in with the offer and in his mind he's thinking 10% would probably be OK. As you say though, you're losing a chunk of space that you're paying for. That should be available to you, so it would make sense to be compensated.

yes, 4.5% reduction of our monthly rent during the work. The 4.5% comes from him refusing compensation through the majority of the works, aside from when my garden is out of action. My argument is I’m disrupted throughout the full 6 months and I’m finding it easier to consider it as a monthly %. It’s a very tricky one to judge, I can’t see many discussions around this online but I feel 4.5% is a bit weak?

 

[teknokid]

On the flip side if you lived in a semi-detached and your neighbors were having building work done you'd be entitled to jack all, so from that point of view 4.5% is quite generous!

Whilst very true, you do at least have a fence and some distance between you and the work/workers. It’s the fact they’re right outside the window and we’re paying for the pleasure that grates!

 

[teknokid]

Thank you everyone for your replies - I’m glad it’s not just me that thinks such a small % reduction is a joke! I’ll go back to him and see what happens, may well be moving soon!

 

[teknokid]

The OP may well use this outside space, it's not even a portion that you'd lose either, you'd lose the entire amount. It's not like you could sit out there and chill whilst you've got a builder 5 feet away digging foundations or something.

The noise will be a big issue as well. Especially as the OP has alluded to WFH now. I'm sure his employer wouldn't take too kindly to hearing construction works in the background of any conferences.

Pretty much this. However, the landlord has already alluded to the fact that if we weren't WFH this wouldn't be much of a problem so he doesn't feel he should compensate. My view is we pay to use the property as and when we wish, so that shouldn't come into it.

As much as we don't want to sour the relationship, 4.5% seems very low to me. I'd agree with others that 50% is too much, but in the region of 10-20% sounds reasonable? At the end of the day, the office is of massive benefit to him, will sour our view long term (it's currently an extension of our garden, although technically belonging to upstairs we have full access etc currently) and the building works will stop us using any of the outdoor space and/or even having windows open. We're in central London, so whilst the garden may sound small to some it's a bloody luxury here and was a godsend throughout lockdown...

 

[teknokid]

The OP doesn't need to move out for the works to start as the works are in a different property not his!

I think this is the bit that seems to keep getting lost in this thread. The work is not on the property the OP rents it is on the one next door.

For clarity - there is no partition, the new property is in the shared garden so absolutely no privacy between us and the works. The land is all part of one single property...

 

[teknokid]

Again this could happen with any privately owned property if planning is granted for building work nearby / next door. No one gets compo from the developers for noise of an estate etc being built. You just have to suck it up!

Therefore 4.5% is I think more than generous as I would suspect that legally they have to give nothing. The OP isn't being prevented from using the outside space, they are choosing not too.

The outside space will be literally less than a metre from the building site, and obviously will therefore be covered in dust/debris etc.. Surely that's very different to if it were next door where you'd still have some level of privacy? The builders will also be using the property above us as a base throughout, so will disturb us further in the process...