Construction Act
What is a due date, and why is it not the day you get paid?
Two dates get mixed up on every late job: the day payment becomes due and the day it must actually arrive. They can be a fortnight apart, every deadline in between is counted from the first one, and the counting itself has one rule most people get backwards.
QScope Team·10 April 2026·4 min read
“It was due on the third, so where is it?” Probably nowhere wrong yet. Due is when the clock starts, not when it rings.
Two dates, not one
The due date is the day a payment becomes due under the contract, typically a set number of days after a valuation date or an application (section 110). The final date for payment is the last day the money can lawfully arrive, a further period on from the due date. On common standard positions that is another fourteen days; under the Scheme, seventeen.
Between the two sit the notices: the payment notice within five days of the due date, and the pay less notice counted back from the final date. Every one of those deadlines hangs off the due date, which is why getting the first number right matters more than any of the others.
The counting rule people get backwards
When a period matters under the Act, weekends count as days. What comes out are Christmas Day, Good Friday and days that are bank holidays under the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 (section 116(3)).
It goes wrong predictably around Easter and the August bank holiday, because those are the weeks where a hand count and the statutory count drift apart by a day.
One more edge: bank holidays differ across the UK. The count uses the calendar of the part of the UK the work is in. QScope and the free calculator use the England and Wales list, so on a job in Scotland or Northern Ireland, check the dates against your own calendar.
On a job for someone living in the house
The Act and its counting rule do not apply to a contract with a residential occupier (section 106). Dates there mean what your contract says they mean, so if your contract says nothing about how to count, write the actual calendar dates into it rather than periods.
What to do this week
1. For the current cycle, write down both dates: due, and final. Chase from the second, not the first.
2. Count once, properly, with holidays out and weekends in, or use the free calculator which applies section 116(3) for you.
3. Never count from the invoice date. Nothing in this machinery runs from it.