Urban Building Surveyors
Chartered Building SurveyorsUrban Building Surveyors
specialises in neighbourly matters, including party walls, rights to light, boundaries, easements, as well as daylight and sunlight for planning.
David Bowden is a founding director of Urban Building Surveyors in London.
He specialises in party walls, rights to light and other rights across boundaries.
For over twenty five years David Bowden has had the pleasure and privilege of working with many clients on a wide range of projects advising on and successfully resolving many complex disputes and issues.
David is very knowledgeable about the effects of construction work including noise and vibration, light obstruction and pollution, and electromagnetic radiation. He has extensive experience in their control both in practical terms and legally under party wall, planning, and pollution legislation, and at common law.
David Bowden enjoys working with clients and other professionals to facilitate construction in the urban environment, to help maximise site use, to minimise costs and delays caused by or to neighbours, and to safeguard the rights of owners of land and buildings from building works and associated activities nearby.
David Bowden BSc FRICS MAE MSLL ACIArb
David Bowden is a Chartered Building Surveyor who specialises in neighbourly matters, including party walls, rights to light, daylight and sunlight for planning, easements, and boundaries.
He has a degree in Land Administration from the North East London Polytechnic, now the University of East London.
After gaining his degree in 1978 he became an assistant to the late John Anstey BA FRICS, rights to light and party wall surveyor, of Anstey Horne & Co in Newbury Street EC1, who to this day is considered an authority on party walls and rights to light.
John Anstey was extensively involved in the drafting of the Party Wall etc Act 1996, and the founding of the Pyramus & Thisbe Club (the P&T) in 1974. The P&T was established for surveyors and members of other professions in London to share knowledge and experience in party wall matters, and was limited to one hundred members.
In 1982 David left to gain further experience at Wilks Head & Eve in Harley Street W1, a similarly well known and respected firm specialising in the same areas but with a wider portfolio. There he worked with the highly renowned party wall surveyors, Tony Leech FRICS, Keith McDonald JP FRICS FRIBA MInstRA, and Eric Roe FRICS, in what was fast becoming David’s field of expertise.
To enable David to join at that time the P&T removed the limit on the number of party wall surveyor members.
.In 1987 David became a Chartered Building Surveyor through further study and RICS exams. In the same year he became an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
In 1988 he started his own practice, David Bowden Associates, and in 2006 became a founding director of Urban Building Surveyors in the City of London, a company specialising primarily in party walls and rights to light.
In 2014 he was elected a member of the Society of Light and Lighting.
David is an occasional writer and public speaker in his specialist areas. He often gives expert evidence to the County Court at Central London and other courts. He has been cited in legal text books and examples of his published papers can be found in the resources section of the firm’s website.
He has re-written and edited, with others, the RICS Practice Statement and Guidance Note on Construction Works under the Party Wall etc Act 1996 Fifth edition.
He has also researched and prepared question papers on the more obscure aspects of party wall matters for the party wall surveyors at the P&T London Conferences and helped organise the 2018 conference.
In 2015 he was elected to the National Council and the London Committee of the P&T and in 2018 he was elected Chairman of the London Committee.
In 2021 he was elected as a Full Member of The Academy of Experts in the Practising Category as a Chartered Building Surveyor.
In 2022 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Pyramus & Thisbe Society.