This is all about our beloved adjudication machinery. The Court of Appeal judge Sir Rupert Jackson said: “We are all trying to hack out a pathway through a dense thicket of amended legislation, burgeoning case law and ever-changing standard form contracts.” Let me add: and smack bang up at the front, in the midst of that thicket, wielding machetes, are the adjudicators. For 20 years we have been trying to hack what the hell that part of the Construction Act is all about. Well, now, this case of S&T (UK) Ltd vs Grove Developments Ltd has hacked out a clearing. And not before time.

Time and again, the payer is either idle, lackadaisical or downright silly when it comes to paying the account on its precious building project. The payer makes a mess of sending the payment notice, and telling the contractor what cash it will soon see dropping through its letter box. The Construction Act is plain: if you don’t pipe up with a payment notice saying what sum you will pay, or don’t pipe up instead with a withholding or pay less notice, you are (how to put it?) well and truly stuffed. The game is easy: “pipe up or pay up”. And then what do you have to pay up? You pay the contractor’s figure in his payment demand – even if his figure is wrong or downright silly. And the payer then wails and moans in agony. 

“Parliament intends the payer to play the good manners card. It’s downright rude not to tell the contractor payee if you have no intention of agreeing with what his account says is payable”

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