There is no construction lien in England and Wales, and here is what you use instead

You have finished the work, the money has not arrived, and somebody has told you to put a lien on the building. So you search for how to register one in England and you find nothing, because there is nothing to find. There is no construction lien, no mechanics' lien, no statutory holdback trust and no registrable claim against the title in England, Wales or Scotland. Northern Ireland has none either.

What the United Kingdom has instead is a statutory payment code with hard deadlines and a tribunal that decides in twenty-eight days. On an ordinary unpaid application it moves money faster than a lien would, because a lien secures a debt and then waits, and these routes make somebody pay.

This page is the four routes that actually work, ranked by how quickly cash lands, then the three near-lien devices that do exist in English law and what each one bites on. Every rule below carries the section it comes from, so you can check any of it.

The four routes, ranked by how fast the money moves

The statute behind three of them is the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 Part II, rewritten by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, in force 1 October 2011 in England and Wales and 1 November 2011 in Scotland. Contractors call it the Construction Act.

The order matters. Suspension is the only one that costs nothing and starts working the same week, which is why it belongs first on any unpaid job you are still standing on.

Route one: suspend under section 112, on seven days' notice

Section 112(1) is the closest thing British construction has to leverage on site:

Where the requirement in section 111(1) applies in relation to any sum but is not complied with, the person to whom the sum is due has the right (without prejudice to any other right or remedy) to suspend performance of any or all of his obligations under the contract to the party by whom payment ought to have been made.

Read the trigger carefully, because it is precise. Section 111(1) says the payer must pay the notified sum, to the extent not already paid, on or before the final date for payment. If that final date has gone by and the notified sum is short, section 112 has switched on. You do not need permission, a certificate, or anybody's agreement.

Three things make this route better than it looks.

Any or all of your obligations. You can pull the whole gang off site, or you can suspend one obligation and keep working on the rest. Suspending the issue of design information, the handover of test certificates or the commissioning of a system you have already installed is often more painful for the payer than emptying the compound, and far less disruptive to your own programme.

The stoppage is billable. Section 112(3A), added in 2011, says the party in default "shall be liable to pay to the party exercising the right a reasonable amount in respect of costs and expenses reasonably incurred by that party as a result of the exercise of the right". Demobilisation, plant standing or off-hire, remobilisation, the scaffold you had to leave up: those are costs and expenses of the suspension and they are recoverable as of right.

You get the time back. Section 112(4) says any period of suspension "shall be disregarded in computing for the purposes of any contractual time limit the time taken" to complete work directly or indirectly affected, and where the time limit is set by a date rather than a period, "the date shall be adjusted accordingly". So the liquidated damages clause does not eat you alive while you are stood down.

Section 112(2) sets the one condition: at least seven days' notice of intention to suspend, stating the ground or grounds. That is the whole formality. A short letter or email naming the application, the final date for payment that passed, the sum outstanding, the section, and the date suspension will begin does the job.

Here is a real sequence, counted on the Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998 defaults, which apply where your contract has no compliant mechanism of its own.

Nine days from the missed payment to a legally protected stoppage, at no cost, with the stoppage billable and the programme extended. The equivalent Scottish numbers are identical, because the Scheme for Construction Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 1998 as amended in 2011 carries the same seventeen, five and seven days.

The full drafting of the notice and what to bill for the stoppage is in suspending work for non-payment.

Route two: adjudication under section 108, decided in 28 days

Section 108(1) gives a party to a construction contract "the right to refer a dispute arising under the contract for adjudication", and the right can be exercised at any time. There is no minimum value, no permission stage, and no window that closes on you.

Section 108(2) sets the timetable your contract has to provide, and the Scheme fills it in where your contract does not:

Carried forward from the suspension example: a notice of adjudication served on 6 July 2026 produces a referral by 13 July 2026 and a decision by 10 August 2026, or 24 August 2026 if you alone agree the fourteen day extension. Five weeks and change from notice to a binding decision, while the job is suspended and the stoppage costs are accruing.

Section 108(3) makes the decision binding until the dispute is finally determined by litigation, arbitration or agreement. In practice that binding interim status is the end of the argument on most unpaid invoices, because the money moves and the loser has no appetite to re-run it.

The fees are knowable in advance, which is the part most people do not realise. TeCSA charges £450 for a standard nomination and £250 under its Low Value Disputes service, which takes claims up to £100,000 and caps the adjudicator's own fee: £2,000 for claims to £10,000, £2,500 to £25,000, £3,500 to £50,000, £4,500 to £75,000 and £5,000 to £100,000. Off that route, adjudicators charge roughly £250 to £350 an hour plus VAT. Other nominating bodies include the RICS Dispute Resolution Service, CIArb, RIBA, CEDR, the CIC and the ICE.

Your own legal costs are not recoverable and cannot be pre-allocated. Section 108A, added in 2011, makes a contractual allocation of adjudication costs ineffective unless it is either (a) in writing, contained in the construction contract, and confers power on the adjudicator to allocate his fees and expenses between the parties, or (b) made in writing after the notice of intention to refer was given. Limb (a) permits the ordinary clause letting the adjudicator apportion his own fee; what it does not permit is a clause making one side carry the other's legal costs regardless of outcome, which is the drafting that used to sit on subcontracts and no longer works. Under Scheme Part I paragraph 25 the parties are jointly and severally liable for the adjudicator's fee, and the adjudicator apportions it, ordinarily against the party who lost.

The version of adjudication that pays your application in full

This is the mechanism with no Canadian, American or Australian equivalent, and it is worth more to a British subcontractor than a lien ever was.

Section 110A requires a payment notice not later than five days after the payment due date, specifying the sum the payer considers to be due and the basis on which that sum is calculated. Section 110B(2) then says that where the payer fails to give it, you may give the notice yourself, and section 110B(3) postpones the final date for payment day for day by however late you were in doing so.

Section 111(2) sets out what the notified sum is. Where the payer gave a compliant payment notice, it is their figure. Where you gave a default payment notice under section 110B(2), it is your figure. And then section 111(1):

Subject as follows, where a payment is provided for by a construction contract, the payer must pay the notified sum (to the extent not already paid) on or before the final date for payment.

The only escape is a pay less notice under section 111(3), which under section 111(4) must specify "the sum that the payer considers to be due on the date the notice is served" and "the basis on which that sum is calculated", with the same subsection adding that it is immaterial that the sum may be zero. Section 111(5) requires it "not later than the prescribed period before the final date for payment", and under Scheme Part II paragraph 10 that period is seven days.

Put those together. A payer who serves no payment notice and no pay less notice must pay the notified sum in full on the final date for payment, whatever the true value of the work turns out to be. The Court of Appeal in S&T (UK) Ltd v Grove Developments Ltd settled the order of play: the payer pays first and can only then start a separate adjudication on true value. That is why an unnoticed application is the strongest position a subcontractor can be in, and why the two notice dates deserve a diary entry on every valuation. The dates and the drafting are in the pay less notice, and the notice, the referral and the twenty-eight days are in how to start an adjudication.

Route three: statutory interest and the fixed sum, whether or not your contract says so

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 implies a right to simple interest into every business-to-business contract for the supply of goods or services. It applies automatically. You do not have to have printed it on the invoice, and you do not have to have agreed it.

Section 4 fixes when interest starts running: on the day after the relevant day, which is the agreed payment day, or thirty days for a public authority, or sixty days for a business purchaser unless the longer agreed day is "not grossly unfair to the supplier". Section 6 hands the rate to the Secretary of State, and the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Rate of Interest) (No. 3) Order 2002 sets it at 8% over the Bank of England official Bank Rate, fixed for each half year by reference to the rate on the preceding 30 June or 31 December. With Bank Rate at 3.75%, statutory interest is 11.75%.

Section 5A adds a fixed sum on top, and it is worth quoting because people assume it is a contractual nicety:

(1) Once statutory interest begins to run in relation to a qualifying debt, the supplier shall be entitled to a fixed sum (in addition to the statutory interest on the debt).

Section 5A(2) sets it at £40 for a debt under £1,000, £70 for £1,000 or more but under £10,000, and £100 for £10,000 or more. Section 5A(2A) goes further: "if the reasonable costs of the supplier in recovering the debt are not met by the fixed sum, the supplier shall also be entitled to a sum equivalent to the difference between the fixed sum and those costs." Your debt collection agency's fee, or the cost of the person who spent a week chasing, sits inside that subsection.

On the £18,400 from the example, unpaid from 25 June 2026:

That is £455.40 you add to the ledger by writing two lines on the statement, and it is the same £455.40 an adjudicator will award you at the end of route two. The half-yearly rate mechanics and the letter that puts them on the record are in charging statutory interest on a late invoice.

Route four: the courts, including the one that backfires

Court is slower than adjudication for a construction debt, and it is the right answer in two situations: the contract is outside the Construction Act, or the debt is undisputed and you simply want a judgment.

Money Claim Online and the County Court. The fee scale is the whole calculation, and it is the same online or on paper:

On the £18,400 example the issue fee is £920, against £250 plus a capped £2,500 to adjudicate the same money in twenty-eight days. Below £10,000, on a debt the payer is ignoring rather than disputing, the fee scale flips the other way and Money Claim Online is the cheaper door. Fees are recoverable if you win, and a claim to £10,000 is normally allocated to the small claims track, where each side bears its own costs.

The Technology and Construction Court. The TCC is the specialist court for construction disputes and the place you go to enforce an adjudicator's decision. Enforcement is a Part 7 claim followed immediately by an application for summary judgment under CPR Part 24, on the test in rule 24.3: that the other side has no real prospect of succeeding on the defence and there is no other compelling reason for a trial. The Pre-Action Protocol for Construction and Engineering Disputes exempts proceedings "for the enforcement of the decision of an adjudicator ... pursuant to section 108 of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996" and proceedings that "will be the subject of a claim for summary judgment pursuant to Part 24", which is precisely why enforcement is measured in weeks rather than months.

The statutory demand and the winding-up petition. You can serve a statutory demand on a company for a debt of £750 or more, which gives it twenty-one days to pay or reach an agreement, after which you can petition to wind it up. GOV.UK puts the cost of petitioning at £352 in court fees plus a £2,600 petition deposit to fund the winding-up. A demand from an unpaid subcontractor concentrates minds, and on an ignored, undisputed debt it is the fastest lever in this list.

It is also the one that goes wrong. Insolvency proceedings are not a debt collection mechanism, and petitioning on a debt the payer genuinely disputes on substantial grounds is an abuse of the process of the court. The company applies to restrain or strike out the petition, gets it, and you pay indemnity costs on top of your own. The test is not whether you think the dispute is nonsense. It is whether there is a substantial dispute at all: a counterclaim for defects, a contra charge, a rejected valuation. Where any of that is live, adjudicate the valuation first and use the decision as the undisputed debt.

The near-lien devices that do exist, and what each one bites on

Three real mechanisms in English law do part of the job a lien does. They are worth knowing because they are the ones you can set up in advance.

A lien over goods you still hold. An English lien is possessory. It is a right to retain goods you already have until you are paid, and it dies the instant you give possession up. On a construction site that is a narrow right, because materials fixed to the land become part of the land, so there is nothing left to retain once they are in. What it does still cover is anything of the customer's you hold and have not handed back: the plant in your yard, the units built but not yet delivered, the kit awaiting installation, drawings and models on a supply-and-install package. A general lien clause in your own terms, saying you may retain any goods, materials or documents of the customer in your possession until all sums due are paid, extends the right beyond the particular job it arose on. Before you rely on it, read the vesting clause in the main form, because JCT and NEC subcontracts commonly provide that unfixed materials brought onto site pass to the employer once paid for or once delivered.

Retention of title in your terms and conditions. Section 17 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 makes the passing of property a question of what the parties intended, and section 19(1) lets a seller "reserve the right of disposal of the goods until certain conditions are fulfilled", with the result that "notwithstanding the delivery of the goods to the buyer ... the property in the goods does not pass to the buyer until the conditions imposed by the seller are fulfilled". A retention of title clause in your standard terms is the practical use of that subsection: title in the materials stays with you until the invoice is paid in full.

It bites while the goods remain identifiable and unfixed, which is a real window on a materials-heavy package. It stops biting the moment they are incorporated into the building, because they cease to be goods and become part of the land. For a business that supplies materials without installing them, retention of title matters more than everything else on this page, because section 105(2) of the 1996 Act puts pure materials supply outside the Construction Act altogether, so adjudication and suspension are not available to that contract at all.

A charging order after judgment. This is the mechanism that most resembles a lien, and it sits at the end of the process rather than the beginning. Under section 1 of the Charging Orders Act 1979, where a debtor is required to pay money under a judgment of the High Court, the family court or the county court, the appropriate court may make an order "imposing on any such property of the debtor as may be specified in the order a charge for securing the payment". Section 3 gives that charge "the like effect" as an equitable charge created by the debtor in writing, enforceable in the same courts and the same manner, and it can be registered against the title at HM Land Registry. Once registered it sits on the property, is discovered on any sale or refinance, and can be followed by an application for an order for sale.

So the claim on the building does exist in England and Wales. It is simply gated behind a judgment, which is what makes the enforcement route in the TCC worth finishing rather than abandoning once an adjudicator has decided in your favour.

Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the customer who is a homeowner

Scotland has no lien and no TCC, but it has one mechanism England lacks. The Construction Act applies, the Scheme for Construction Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 1998 as amended in 2011 carries the same seventeen, five and seven day periods, and enforcement runs through the Court of Session or the sheriff court rather than the Technology and Construction Court, with Simple Procedure for small sums. The advantage is paragraph 24 of Part I of the Scottish Scheme: "where a party or the adjudicator wishes to register the decision for execution in the Books of Council and Session, any other party shall, on being requested to do so, forthwith consent to such registration by subscribing the decision before a witness." A registered decision is enforceable by diligence, such as an inhibition against heritable property or an arrestment of funds in the debtor's bank, without starting a fresh court action at all. In Northern Ireland the equivalent statute is the Construction Contracts (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, where adjudication is Article 7, the notified sum is Article 10 and suspension is Article 11, on the same shape and the same numbers.

One category of customer sits outside all of it. Section 106 excludes construction contracts with a residential occupier, meaning a homeowner having work done on the dwelling they occupy or intend to occupy, so against that client there is no statutory adjudication, no pay less notice regime and no section 112 suspension. The answer there is to build the protection into the contract before you start, with written stage payments, a retention of title clause and a contractual adjudication or mediation option, and the small claims track behind it. That whole route is what to do when a homeowner will not pay.

Which route, for which debt

Where the account is large, the counterclaim is real and the relationship is worth keeping, an hour with a solicitor who does construction adjudication is money well spent before you pick a door.

What it costs

Suspension costs nothing. Statutory interest and the section 5A fixed sum cost nothing. The paid routes are the ones in the tables above, and the cheapest effective one for a mid-size unpaid application is nomination plus a capped adjudicator's fee, which is a fraction of the 5% court fee on the same money.

On AEC Stack there is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5% of each invoice processed through the platform, taken when the invoice is paid, so a quiet month costs nothing. Your applications carry their own due date, payment notice deadline, pay less deadline and final date for payment, counted from the date you submitted them, so the day section 112 switches on is a date you already have rather than one you reconstruct from a folder of PDFs.

Put the date you submitted your oldest unpaid application into the payment dates panel and see how many days ago the final date for payment went by.