Movement and Settlement Observation Record Checklist

Walk the full perimeter and write down, wall by wall, whether the ground rises towards the building, falls away from it, or has been levelled flat at some point.

The setting is among the first things a professional asks about, and describing it needs nothing beyond a pair of boots and a notebook.

Note where a garden, drive or path appears to have been built up or dug out since the property was built, and photograph each change of level where it meets a wall.

Altered ground is often invisible to a visitor and obvious to whoever has lived with it, so the household is the only reliable source.

Whether an altered ground level matters here is for a qualified structural engineer to assess; do not dig out or build up anything on your own initiative.

Record whether any part of the plot slopes, and which corner of the building appears to sit lowest, judged by eye and by where water runs after heavy rain.

A plain description of the fall across a plot places every later observation in context and avoids producing figures that look like survey data.

Note any retaining wall, bank, embankment or step in ground level within sight of the building, photograph it, and say whether it belongs to you or to a neighbour.

Ownership of a retaining feature determines who can even discuss it, and that question is far easier to settle before anyone is instructed.

Retaining structures and the ground they hold back are for a qualified structural engineer; do not excavate at the foot of one or load the ground above it meanwhile.

Write down anything you know about what stood on the plot before, such as an earlier building, an outbuilding, a pond or a filled hollow, marking it clearly as recollection.

Recollection is not evidence, but it points investigation somewhere useful, and it is lost entirely once the household changes.

Ask what the ground in your area is generally understood to be like, and confirm locally what records exist, rather than assuming anything about what lies beneath the property.

Owners often repeat something a neighbour once said about the ground, and it then gets treated as established fact by everyone afterwards.

Ground conditions can only be established by a qualified professional through appropriate investigation; nothing visible at the surface settles the question.

Stand well back from each elevation, sight along the ridge, the eaves and the gutter line, and note anything that dips, rises or waves along its length.

Long horizontal lines make small changes visible to an untrained eye, which is exactly why they are worth looking at first.

Look along the courses of brick or block, and along the heads of the windows on each floor, noting anywhere a line stops running parallel with the one above it.

Course lines are a free reference built into the wall, and describing where they diverge is observation rather than interpretation.

Look up each external corner of the building from directly beneath it and note whether it appears upright or leaning, without holding anything against the wall to test it.

A sighted impression recorded honestly is useful; a reading taken with a household tool tends to be repeated later as though it were survey information.

Whether a wall is out of plumb, and what that would mean, is for a qualified structural engineer to establish with proper instruments and interpretation.

Note how any chimney stack sits against the roof and the wall below it, and photograph it from more than one direction while standing on the ground.

Stacks are visible from the street and from the garden, and two viewpoints tell a professional far more than one ever can.

Do not go onto a roof or use a ladder to look at a stack; anything above ground level is for a qualified professional with proper access arrangements.

Record whether bay windows, porches, canopies and door surrounds still sit square with the wall behind them, and whether a gap has opened where they meet it.

These features are built differently from the wall they join, so the junction between them shows change earlier than the wall does.

Note where a gutter now holds water or spills at one end, and where a downpipe no longer sits vertical against the wall, photographing both from the same standing spot.

Rainwater goods follow the building they are fixed to, so how they now sit is an observation about the building as much as about the gutter.

Open and close each fitted wardrobe and kitchen unit door and note any that now stand proud at one corner or no longer line up with the door beside them.

Fitted joinery was hung to fit the opening on the day it was made, so it works as an unintended record of what has happened since.

Look along the top of a run of units and along each worktop junction, noting any gap that has opened where the worktop meets the wall or where two lengths meet.

These junctions were closed when installed, and a gap that has opened is a plain observation needing no interpretation at all.

Note anything about the stairs that has changed, such as a newel post that now moves, a handrail that has parted from the wall, or a tread that sounds different underfoot.

Stairs are used daily and small changes register with the household long before anyone would think to look for them.

A staircase that has begun to move is for a qualified professional to look at; do not re-fix, wedge or tighten anything on it in the meantime.

Place something round on a hard floor in several rooms, note where it rolls and in which direction, and record that as an observation rather than as any kind of measurement.

It is repeatable, it needs nothing beyond something round, and it gives a direction without producing a figure anybody could misuse later.

Note where tiling, sealant or a shower tray has parted from the wall, and where a bath or basin no longer meets its splashback along the whole of its length.

Wet areas are sealed tightly when fitted, so a junction that has opened is both easy to see and easy to describe accurately.

Record any ceiling that now dips, bows or shows a line where it meets the wall, photographing it in low-angle light from the doorway rather than from directly beneath it.

Low-angle light reveals a dish or bow that is invisible from underneath, and the doorway gives a position you can return to.

Do not push, probe or lean on a ceiling that has changed shape, and ask a qualified professional to look at it before anything else is done in that room.

Identify every part of the property you understand to have been added later, and mark each one on a rough sketch plan with whatever you know about it.

A sketch that names the parts saves an enormous amount of explanation and lets a professional ask precise questions from the outset.

Photograph the vertical joint where each addition meets the original wall, both outside and inside, whether or not anything is visible there at the moment.

A photograph showing nothing today is what makes it possible to say something later, and nobody thinks to take it once something appears.

Note whether the floor, the ceiling line or the roof line changes as you pass from the original building into the addition, describing the step or slope in ordinary words.

Plain description keeps the record honest, whereas a figure from a tape measure invites others to rely on it as though it had been surveyed.

Write down what you know about how each addition was built and who arranged it, and gather whatever paperwork exists even where it is patchy or undated.

Incomplete paperwork still narrows the questions, and it is usually somewhere in the file from when the property was bought.

Where a porch, conservatory, garage or bay seems to sit differently from the house, describe what is visible at the junction and stop there.

The urge to say that one part is pulling away from another is strong, and it is the point at which an owner record loses its value.

Whether parts of a building are moving relative to one another is a structural judgement for a qualified engineer, never a conclusion drawn from a joint.

Ask a qualified structural engineer how the different parts of the property would be looked at, and record which parts they say have to be considered together.

Owners often assume an addition can be assessed on its own, and hearing otherwise early changes what is worth recording.

Go out during heavy rain and note where water leaves the roof, where it lands, where it stands, and where it runs across paving towards or away from the walls.

None of this can be reconstructed on a dry day, and it is the observation an owner is uniquely placed to make.

Note where drain covers and gullies sit, whether any cover has tipped or dropped below the surface around it, and whether a gully is holding water when it appears clear.

The position and seating of covers is visible from standing height and tells a professional where to start asking.

Do not lift covers, rod, flush or otherwise test any drain; drainage investigation is work for a suitably qualified drainage professional.

Photograph staining, moss growth or a persistently darker band on the wall near a downpipe, gully or overflow, taking the picture in similar light on different days.

Marks on a wall look completely different in changing light, so a comparable set matters more than a single striking image.

Record any path, drive or paved area that has cracked, tipped or pulled away from the wall of the building, saying where it is and what it appears to be made of.

Hard surfaces against a building are laid tight to it, so the way they now sit is an observation the household can describe confidently.

List any drain, soakaway, gutter or water main work carried out at the property, and any occasion when water was found escaping below ground, with dates where you have them.

These events are forgotten by the time anyone visits, and dated entries are worth far more than a general recollection that something once happened.

Ask a qualified professional what would need to be established about the drainage here before anything is concluded, and write down what they say is worth looking at first.

It converts a suspicion into a question, and the answer usually reshapes what else in this record is worth continuing.

Record every tree and large shrub within sight of the building, saying roughly how far each stands from the nearest wall in paces, and photograph each one where it stands.

Paced distances are honestly approximate, which is the right register for an owner record and avoids inventing precision.

Note anything planted, removed, felled, cut hard back or simply left to grow unchecked near the property, with dates as close as you can manage from memory or photographs.

What changed and when is the whole of the useful information here, and old garden photographs often date it better than anyone remembers.

Note whose land each tree stands on, including trees in neighbouring gardens, on a verge, or on land belonging to a local authority or another body.

Ownership decides who could even be approached about a tree, and getting it wrong wastes a great deal of everyone's effort.

Confirm locally whether any tree near the property carries protection or falls within a local designation, before pruning or removal is so much as discussed.

This is a question for the local authority, and asking it early prevents a well-meant tidy-up from becoming a serious problem.

Whether a tree may be pruned or removed is for your local authority and a qualified arboriculturist; nothing here allows any work to any tree.

Note where a hedge, root or old stump sits close to a wall, path or drain, and photograph any lifted paving or disturbed ground nearby without digging to see further.

Surface evidence is worth recording exactly as found, and digging around it removes what a professional would have wanted to see.

Do not excavate to expose roots or foundations; any trial hole near a building is specified and supervised by a qualified structural engineer.

Resist linking any tree to anything you have observed in the building, and keep the planting record as a plain list alongside the rest of your notes.

Once a record names a suspect, everybody who reads it afterwards starts from that assumption rather than from the observations.

Whether vegetation has any bearing on movement at a property is for a qualified structural engineer, often with specialist input, and never an owner conclusion.

Write a single dated line for each thing you notice, in the order you noticed it, rather than sorting everything by room after the fact.

A chronological list preserves sequence, which is the one thing a professional cannot reconstruct from photographs alone.

For each entry, say whether it is something that appeared recently or something the household had lived with for a long time and only now wrote down.

Otherwise everything in the record looks equally new, and a long-standing feature gets treated as a recent development.

Note which season each observation falls in, and whether the ground had been unusually wet or unusually dry in the period beforehand, described in ordinary terms.

Conditions before an observation matter as much as conditions during it, and neither can be recalled reliably afterwards.

Where something seems to come and go, describe what you saw on each separate occasion instead of writing that it varies with the seasons.

Each occasion described plainly can be used by anybody; a pattern declared by an owner has to be unpicked before it can be.

Whether anything is seasonal, progressive or long since finished is a structural judgement for a qualified engineer working from proper investigation.

Put the name of whoever made each entry against it, so a description written by one member of the household is not later attributed to another with a different eye.

Two people describe the same thing differently, and knowing who wrote what lets a professional ask the right person a follow-up question.

Add anything that happened at or near the property that belongs in the same sequence, such as work next door, heavy deliveries, or a room being used differently.

Surrounding events are invisible to anyone arriving later, and placing them in the same list is what makes the order meaningful.

Gather the paperwork from your purchase, including searches and any report you commissioned, and note what it records about the condition of the building and the ground.

Searches in particular record things about the plot and the locality that no amount of walking around the building would ever reveal.

Establish whether the property has ever had structural work, propping, tie rods, rebuilding or repair to a wall, and gather whatever paperwork survives about it.

Evidence of past work changes every question that follows, and the household is often the only route to finding out that it happened.

Never take paperwork about past work as settling anything; what it means for the building now is for a qualified structural engineer to assess.

Ask your own buildings insurer what history is held against the property, and record what they tell you rather than relying on what you were told informally when buying.

An insurer may hold a record of a claim made by a previous owner that nobody thought to mention at the point of sale.

Only your own insurer can tell you what your policy covers and what you are required to disclose, and that answer should come from them in writing.

Note any work you know of at neighbouring properties, particularly to shared or adjoining walls, extensions, basements and gardens, with dates as far as you can establish them.

Terraced and semi-detached properties share more than owners assume, and neighbouring history is rarely written down anywhere at all.

Confirm locally what is on record about the area, such as historic land use or known ground characteristics, and file what you find without drawing anything from it.

Public records are a legitimate thing for an owner to collect; interpreting them is a different job entirely.

Speak to long-standing neighbours about what they remember of the street or the row, and mark every bit of it plainly as recollection rather than as established fact.

A street has a longer memory than any of its files, and a neighbour can date an event that appears in no document anywhere.

Keep diagnostic words such as subsidence, heave and structural failure out of your notes altogether, and describe only what was seen, where it was, and when.

Those words carry particular meanings for professionals and insurers, and an owner using one casually shapes how everybody afterwards reads the file.

Leave such terms to a qualified structural engineer, who will use them only if they apply and only after appropriate investigation.

Do not re-bed, re-fix, pack out, level up or make good anything you have recorded, and ask anyone else working in the property to leave those areas exactly as they are.

Making something look right again is the commonest way an owner removes the only evidence they had of how it looked before.

Nothing described in this record is to be re-bedded, packed or made good until a qualified structural engineer has seen the property.

Avoid asking a tradesperson for a view on cause, and where one is offered anyway, write it down with a name against it and treat it as no more than a remark.

Casual opinions harden into accepted fact remarkably quickly once they are repeated within a household.

Only a qualified structural engineer should be relied on for a view on movement at a property; remarks made on site are not a substitute.

Decide who speaks to neighbours about what has been observed, and agree that nothing is described to them as a diagnosis or as anything that has been established.

Alarming descriptions travel along a street quickly, and they are difficult to correct once they have been passed on.

Hold off redecoration, repointing, re-levelling of paving and garden works while the record is being built, and explain to anyone involved why those areas are being left.

Work carried out in the meantime is almost always done in exactly the places that mattered most to the record.

Repairs, ground works and planting near a building can change what can be observed; agree the sequence with a qualified structural engineer first.

Agree with a qualified structural engineer what should be sent ahead of a visit, and arrange the record in the order they ask for rather than the order you built it in.

A record reorganised to suit the reader gets used; one that arrives as a folder of everything usually gets set aside.