The 28-Day Squeeze: Using Adjudication to Get Paid Without a Solicitor on Speed Dial

The phone stops being answered. The emails get shorter. Then someone in accounts tells you the valuation is 'under review' for the third month running, and you realise you are not in a payment dispute — you are in a cash-flow problem with a client attached.

For most small contractors the instinct is to either write it off or start ringing solicitors, both of which are expensive in different ways. There is a middle route, and it exists because construction has its own dispute mechanism built into the law.

What Adjudication Actually Is

The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 — amended in 2009 — gives parties to a construction contract a statutory right to have a dispute decided by an adjudicator. The adjudicator is a single independent professional, usually a quantity surveyor, engineer or construction lawyer, appointed for that one dispute.

The key feature is speed. The decision has to come within 28 days of the referral, extendable by up to 14 days with agreement. Compare that to a court timetable and you will see why adjudication is the default tool for getting money moving.

The decision is binding in the meantime. It is not final — either side can take the same dispute to court or arbitration later — but until that happens, you have a decision you can enforce.

First: Do You Have a Construction Contract?

The right applies to construction contracts in writing, or partly in writing. Most subcontracts and JCT-style agreements qualify. There is an important carve-out for residential occupiers — a homeowner contracting for work on their own home is generally outside the regime, which is why domestic disputes follow a different path.

If your contract is silent on adjudication, the Scheme for Construction Contracts fills the gap. So the absence of a clause is rarely the end of the story, though it is worth checking before you assume anything.

The Timetable, Start to Finish

1. Notice of adjudication. This is a short document naming the parties, describing the dispute and setting out what you want. It starts the clock. Get this wrong — vague scope, wrong party, a dispute that has not actually crystallised — and you hand the other side a jurisdiction challenge.
2. Appointment. You ask an adjudicator nominating body to appoint someone. The main ones are RICS, CIArb, RIBA, the Technology and Construction Solicitors' Association and the Construction Industry Council. You can name an adjudicator in the contract, but most small contracts do not.
3. Referral. Usually within seven days of the notice, you serve the full case: contract, notices, valuations, correspondence, the lot. Then the other side responds, you reply, and the adjudicator decides.
4. Decision. Within 28 days. Payment is normally due seven days after the decision unless it says otherwise.

There is rarely a hearing. Most adjudications are decided on paper, which is another reason the written record matters so much.

Build the File Before You Serve Anything

Adjudicators decide on documents. If your records are thin, no amount of arguing in the referral will rescue you.

What you need, in order of importance:

• The contract and any agreed variations, including emails that vary it.
• Every application for payment, with the date it was submitted.
• Any payment notice or pay less notice from the other side, and the date it was served. This is where most disputes are won and lost.
• Valuations and measurements supporting the sum claimed.
• Site records: diaries, photographs, delivery notes, timesheets, instruction emails.
• A clean chronology. One page, dated, factual. Adjudicators are busy people and they will thank you for it.

If a payer fails to serve a valid pay less notice by the deadline, the sum applied for can become the sum due. That is the so-called smash-and-grab, and it is why dates matter more than sentiment. The flip side is that the payer can still argue true value later, so do not build a claim on a technicality you cannot back up.

What It Costs

Adjudicator fees for a modest dispute typically land somewhere in the low four figures, and they are usually split between the parties according to the decision or in equal shares, depending on the adjudicator's terms. Add the nominating body's administration fee and your own time. Legal representation is permitted but not compulsory — plenty of contractors run their own adjudication on a decent file, and plenty more use a consultant for the referral only.

As a rough filter: below about £5,000 to £10,000, the maths often does not work unless the principle matters to you or you have other jobs with the same payer. Above that, adjudication starts looking like good value against the alternative of not being paid at all.

If They Still Do Not Pay

A decision is not a bank transfer. If the payer ignores it, you enforce. In practice that means issuing proceedings in the Technology and Construction Court and applying for summary judgment, because the court will generally enforce an adjudicator's decision without re-hearing the merits. Jurisdictional challenges are the main defence, and they are narrow.

For clear, undisputed debts, a statutory demand or a winding-up petition is a blunt but effective lever, particularly against a company that needs to keep trading. Use it deliberately, not as a threat you never intend to carry out.

When to Walk Away

Do not adjudicate against a company that is clearly insolvent — you will spend good money to join a queue of creditors. Do not do it over a few hundred pounds of retention. And think hard before you do it with a client you want to work with again, because it does tend to end the relationship.

Adjudication is a tool for a specific job: turning a valid, well-evidenced claim into cash when the normal payment process has failed. Keep your notices in order, keep your records dated, and you will find you need it far less often than you feared.

This is general industry comment, not legal advice. For a live dispute, get a view on your specific contract before you serve anything.