Construction Act
Can I put a lien on the property until I am paid?
The idea feels like justice: my work, my materials, my charge over the building until the money arrives. In England and Wales the law simply does not provide it, and acting as if it does is how an unpaid builder becomes a defendant.
QScope Team·10 August 2026·5 min read
American builders talk about mechanics liens. Canadian ones about builders liens. Somewhere on a forum somebody swears you can register your debt against the client’s house. So can you?
No. And that absence is the whole point of this page
There is no construction lien in England and Wales. No statute gives an unpaid builder a charge over the land, a right to register against the title, or a right to hold the building hostage. This is not a gap waiting for a clever argument; it is how the law here is built, and the lien systems you have heard of belong to other countries.
The materials trap, which is worse
The instinct that follows is “then I will take my materials back”. Be very careful with that instinct, because it splits in two:
- Materials built in are gone. Once incorporated into the building, bricks, timber, boilers, they become part of the land under the long-standing common law of fixtures, whether or not you have been paid for them. Going back to remove a fitted kitchen you were not paid for is not repossession; it risks being trespass and criminal damage, and it converts their debt into your problem.
- Unfixed materials are a maybe. Materials still in their packaging may still be yours if your terms kept ownership until payment, but taking them depends on your contract, whose site it is and how you get in. This is the line where you talk to a solicitor before you act, not after.
What you actually have instead
Weaker-sounding, and in practice stronger:
- The notified sum machinery. On jobs the Construction Act covers, an unanswered application can become the sum they must pay (sections 110A and 111).
- Suspension. On those same jobs, the statutory right to stop work on seven days written notice (section 112). Leverage without touching a single brick.
- Adjudication (section 108): a decision in about a month. Not available against a residential occupier (section 106): on the extension for the family living in the house, the route is a letter before action and the county court.
- Interest on the late debt, with the business-or-consumer split that decides which kind.
What to do this week
1. Take property remedies off your list. They do not exist here, and half-versions of them create liability.
2. Run the machinery you do have, in order: notified sum letter, then suspension notice where the Act applies, then the dispute route that matches your client.
3. If your terms have no retention of title clause for unfixed materials, add one for the next job. It is the one property-flavoured protection English law does let you write.
Where the information stops
The moment you are considering entering site, removing anything, or changing the locks on work you built, stop and take an hour of legal advice first. Every remedy above survives a solicitor’s review; none of the dramatic ones do.