Party Wall responsibilities

[help4u]

Re: Party Wall responsibilities

I know this is the law gone mad, but we had two incidents when I was a Headteacher - I'll relate both, though only one is directly relevant.

The first was anti-vandalism paint. Its ingredients may have changed, but we had one side where local youths climbed onto the roof as it was low, and walked up it to near its highest point, out of view, in order to do various things that people do. One youth, shortly after putting paint on this side of the building, got it on his designer top and the school was forced to pay for a new top. This was out of hours, with all boundaries secure and locked.

This is something the OP should be aware of. Also, if the wall doesn't belong to them, they may not be able to do this anyway.

The second incident regarded youths climbing over the boundary while secured and locked again, and playing football on the field - something until this point I'd not particuarly objected to, they could have been doing far worse. However, one youth was messing about swinging off the crossbar on the goals. He broke his arm and tried to sue the school. This time, bizarrely bearing in mind the first example, the school was found innocent of the injuries, but we were advised that any injuries sustained on our land, even out of hours, was our responsibility (or potentially our repsonsibility). We scrapped the longstanding posts and replaced them with different ones.

To me, it is the world gone mad. Rather like burglars claiming for cuts sustained while beaking and entering a premises.

Something for the OP to be mindful of though, as unless things have changed in the past 10ish years, this was certainly the 'eye of the law' then.

This is very illuminating, and I thankyou for this.