Specialist groups have begun a final push to persuade MPs and ministers to introduce reforms to payment and adjudication rules in the Construction Act.

The government is to introduce a bill amending the act in the next session of parliament.

The National Specialist Contractors Council has placed advertorials in The Monitor, the in-house magazine for MPs, and the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group is to lobby the 200 MPs who signed an early day motion in 2005 calling for payment provisions to be made law.

The specialists want more robust payment mechanisms, the banning of pay-when-certified clauses and an end to clauses requiring the party that brings an adjudication to pay the other side’s costs.

It is understood that the detailed amendments to the bill are likely to address these issues, as well as ending the rule that adjudication needs a written contract.

These proposals were part of the second consultation into the act, which concluded at the end of 2007.

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said its proposals to reform the act, made in the draft Queen’s speech, were “at a broad-brush level”.

The Construction Confederation said it would welcome changes to adjudication but was unconvinced that changes to payment provisions were needed.

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