Construction Act & payment

Somebody on the client side is supposed to value your work, certify it and run the clock. Knowing who, by name and role, decides where your application goes, whose silence starts the default machinery, and whose email actually binds the client.

Under NEC the assessment date drives the timetable. With Option Y(UK)2 the payment becomes due seven days after it and the final date fourteen days after that. The gap is where a JCT habit costs a week.

A termination made without proper grounds, or without following the procedure, can itself be a repudiatory breach. The other side can accept it and claim damages. Getting the ground and the process right is the whole game.

Yes, and the route has a name: a smash and grab adjudication enforces the notified sum without anyone valuing the work. What makes the claim stick, what the client can do next, and why the money is usually yours to hold but not always yours to keep.

The notified sum is the figure that becomes payable under the Construction Act, whoever thinks the work was worth something else. Where the number comes from, how a pay less notice changes it, and why none of this exists on a job for someone living in the house.

A payment notice has to say the sum considered due and how it is worked out, and it has to read as the notice it claims to be. Miss either and it is nothing.

Chasing each payment is fighting the same battle twelve times. The fix happens once, at the start: a written schedule of every due date, notice date and final date for the whole job, so lateness stops being an opinion and starts being a number of days.

Termination for default stops further sums becoming due until the account is drawn. Insolvency suspends the duty to pay or release retention from the insolvency event itself. The ordinary payment cycle no longer applies.

Silence after a payment application has a legal meaning. When your application already does the work, when to serve a payee notice under section 110B, and what silence means on a job for someone living in the house.

A certificate for less is not money lost, it is money deferred, unless you let it disappear. Why the certified figure usually rules the month, how cumulative valuations carry the difference forward, and when the fight is worth having now.

If the client is a business, statutory interest can apply even where your contract is silent. If the client is a private homeowner, the Act does not apply and your own contract is all you have. The split, and the trap in writing your own rate.

On a job the Construction Act covers, a deduction from the notified sum needs a pay less notice in time, with the amount and the basis. A snag list is not a notice, and the sum deducted has to be the real cost of putting things right.

The due date starts the clock. The final date for payment is when money must arrive. Between them sits a counting rule that keeps weekends in and takes bank holidays out, on the England and Wales calendar.

A certificate that never comes does not stop the payment machinery. The dates run from the due date, silence hands you the notice under section 110B, and the sum can become payable without anyone signing a certificate.

Usually yes. The Construction Act struck out pay-when-paid clauses in 1996, so your subcontractor’s money is due on the subcontract’s own dates, whatever your client is doing. The one exception, the clauses that sneak the idea back in, and how to manage the gap honestly.

A pay less notice is the only lawful way to pay you less than the sum notified. What it must contain, when it must arrive, what happens when it never does, and why none of it applies on a job for someone living in the house.

Mostly not. The Construction Act excludes contracts with a residential occupier, so on the most common small job in Britain there is no notified sum, no statutory suspension and no adjudication. What disappears, what survives, and how to put the machinery back by contract.

A letter before action is a named step with rules, not an angry email in capitals. What it must contain, which pre-action protocol applies to your debtor, and the thirty-day point on consumer debts.

Every payment deadline on a job is counted from four periods, and they are in your contract rather than in the law. Which four, where to find them, and why a figure someone else assumed for you is worth nothing when it matters.

QScope counts the days from due date to final date for payment under section 116, excluding the statutory non-days, so notices and any adjudication rest on enforceable dates.

QScope watches the section 110A and section 111 deadlines against each due date, so a missed notice does not turn the application into the notified sum by default.

A statutory dispute process built for construction: a decision from an independent adjudicator in about 28 days, binding until the account is finally settled, enforced by the courts on the pay now, argue later principle. How a referral runs, and when it is worth it.

Silence after handover is a strategy, and it works on builders who chase by text message. The ladder that beats it: one letter with a schedule, a real deadline, and a named next step, with the route depending on who your client is.

Four dates in a fixed order: due date, payment notice, pay less notice, final date for payment. Who sets each one, what fills the gap when the contract is silent, and which of them bind on your job.

Calls unanswered, valuations unpaid, and you are halfway through their building. The order of moves that protects you: stop increasing your exposure, suspend properly rather than walk, record the state of the works, and find out what kind of disappearance this is.

There is a statutory right to stop work when the notified sum is not paid, and it needs seven days notice in writing. What it covers, what you can recover, and why it does not exist on a job for someone living in the house.

On a job longer than 45 days the Act gives a right to stage payments, and a silent contract gets the Scheme read into it. When completion-only payment stands, and the difference between what you signed and what he invented.