The defects period: what do you have to do to get the rest of your money?

The period goes by several names, rectification period, defects liability period, defects period, all meaning the same stretch: a set time after practical completion, commonly six or twelve months, stated in your contract particulars. Understand it as a machine with four parts:

The four parts, and who owns each

1. Defects get notified: the client’s side. During the period, and typically gathered into a schedule of defects near its end, the certifier or client lists what has appeared: the shrinkage cracks, the sticking door, the failed sealant. Two boundaries matter. The list is for defects, work not in accordance with the contract, not for wear, misuse, or things the client has changed their mind about, and that line has its own page. And items that are not defects at all belong in your written response, not in your van schedule.

2. Defects get made good: your side, and it is a right as much as a duty. You return and fix at your own cost, which is dramatically cheaper than the alternative, the client hiring someone else at market rates and charging you. This is why the period protects you: it guarantees the cheap fix is yours to make. A client who will not let you back in is running the weakest version of their own claim, and deductions taken instead of access have their own rules.

3. The certificate of making good gets issued: the certifier’s side. When the notified defects are done, a certificate records it. This is the step nobody diaries, and it is the trigger the final release runs on.

4. The retention gets released: and this is why you care. The second half of the retention falls due on or after that certificate, the release mechanics are here, and money stuck at this stage is usually stuck because step 3 silently never happened, the stranded retention page covers the chasing.

Two things the period does not do

It does not end your liability. The period is a retention-and-return mechanism, not an expiry date on responsibility: defects appearing after it are still yours under the general law, for years, subject to the limitation periods. Do not let anyone, including yourself, describe the certificate of making good as “the end of liability”.

It does not authorise new work. Returning to fix your defect is inside the price; “while you are here, could you just” is not, it is new work with a price, however small, and the defects visit is where unpaid extras breed.

On a job for someone living in the house

This is contract machinery end to end, so it exists on a domestic job exactly as far as your contract wrote it in. A proper form brings the period, the schedule and the certificate; a bare quote brings none of it, and then there is no retention mechanism, no release trigger, just general liability, which serves neither side. Where a dispute over the last money hardens, a residential occupier is outside the Construction Act (section 106): the route is the county court, and your file of notifications, visits and completed fixes is the case.

What to do this week

1. Diary two dates for every handed-over job: the end of the defects period, and a chase date a month before it, to ask for the schedule and the inspection.

2. Answer every defects notification in writing: agreed with a fix date, or not a defect with the reason. Then fix fast and confirm completion in writing, because your confirmations are what you will ask the certificate against.

3. The day the making good certificate lands, apply for the release. It does not travel on its own.

Where the information stops

Whether a late-appearing problem is a defect, wear or design, and where your liability truly ends in time, are questions that decide real cases; when the sums at the end of the period are serious, or the schedule arrives looking like a renovation wish list, take a professional hour before you answer it in writing.