Retention
Snags are done. How do you get the final retention released?
You went back, you fixed the list, the client is happy. And the last slice of your money, held for a year already, does not move, because release does not run on the client being happy. It runs on a certificate, and certificates only exist when someone asks for them.
QScope Team·24 December 2025·4 min read
The machinery is short, which is exactly why it stalls: three steps, and every one of them waits for a person to act. The wider defects-period context is on its own page; this one is only about the finish.
The three steps
1. The defects are made good, and you say so in writing. Not just done: recorded as done. One email when the last item closes: “all items on the schedule of [date] have been attended to; items 4 and 7 were not defects, as set out in ours of [date]; please inspect.” This email is the trigger for everything after it, and jobs where it was never sent are jobs where the retention sits for years, see the chasing page for how that ends.
2. The certificate of making good gets issued. Whoever certifies, the architect, the contract administrator, the client where there is none, inspects and certifies that the notified defects are made good. Nobody diaries this for you. Ask for it, by name, in the email above, because a request for “sign-off” produces a nice reply, and a request for the certificate of making good produces the document the money runs on.
3. The release falls due, and you apply for it. On the certificate, the remaining retention becomes releasable under your contract’s terms. Put it in an application: the sum, the certificate date, payment by the final date. From here it is ordinary payment machinery: on jobs the Construction Act covers, holding it back needs a pay less notice with a sum and a basis (section 111), and unexcused lateness is a late payment like any other.
If the certificate simply does not come
Inspect-and-certify is a duty, not a favour, and silence after a documented completion of the defects is the certifier withholding a trigger your money runs on. Chase once with a date; then treat it as the stranded-retention problem it has become, that page has the ladder, including adjudication (section 108) on business jobs, where “defects done, certificate withheld, money held” is a short and unhappy argument for the client.
On a job for someone living in the house
The mechanism is contractual, so it works with a homeowner exactly as far as your contract wrote it in, and if there is no certifier, the certificate is replaced by your own written record: defects done on [date], client confirmed on [date], balance due. A residential occupier is outside the Act (section 106), so a refusal to release ends in a letter before action and the county court rather than adjudication, with that written record as the case.
What to do this week
1. Any job past its defects period with retention outstanding: send step one’s email today, even if the defects finished months ago. The trigger does not expire, it just waits.
2. Ask for the certificate by name, with a response date.
3. Apply for the release in the same breath, so the money and the paperwork travel together.
Where the information stops
Whether an item the certifier keeps reopening is truly outstanding, and whether a withheld certificate has crossed into breach, are judgement calls on the file; when the final slice is serious money, an hour of advice before adjudicating over it is the proportionate move.