Start an adjudication and have a decision in 28 days

Valuation 11 went in at £38,400. The main contractor sent no payment notice and no pay less notice, the final date for payment came and went, and now the quantity surveyor emails to say they value the work at £11,400 and would you like to discuss it. You are being invited into a negotiation you have already won on paper, and the alternative you have been told about is a county court claim that takes a year.

There is a third thing, and it has been sitting in the Construction Act since 1998. You can refer that dispute to an adjudicator and have a decision you can enforce inside about five weeks of writing one letter. This page is how that letter is written, who appoints the adjudicator, what happens on each of the next 28 days, and what the whole thing costs.

Every rule below carries the section of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 or the paragraph of the Scheme for Construction Contracts it comes from, so you can read the wording yourself.

The right is in three words: "at any time"

Section 108(1) of the 1996 Act: a party to a construction contract has the right to refer a dispute arising under the contract for adjudication under a procedure complying with that section. Section 108(2)(a) then requires the contract to enable a party to give notice at any time of an intention to refer a dispute to adjudication.

Those three words are the whole thing. There is no minimum value. There is no requirement to have exhausted the contract's own dispute machinery first. There is no window that closes when the job finishes, no equivalent of the Ontario ninety day door, and no need for the other side to agree to anything. Practical completion does not shut it. A final account settled two years ago does not shut it, so long as a dispute under that contract still exists. You give notice, and the machine starts.

Section 108(2) then sets the timetable the contract has to provide:

• the appointment of the adjudicator and referral of the dispute to him within 7 days of the notice, under section 108(2)(b);
• a decision within 28 days of referral, under section 108(2)(c);
• an extension of up to 14 days, which the adjudicator may take with the consent of the referring party alone, under section 108(2)(d);
• any longer period only by agreement of the parties after the dispute has been referred, again under section 108(2)(c).

Read 108(2)(d) twice. The 14 day extension belongs to you if you are the one referring. The payer cannot buy time with it. Beyond 42 days it takes both signatures, which in practice means the payer has to ask you for the delay it wants.

If your contract does not provide all of that, section 108(5) does it for you: the adjudication provisions of the Scheme for Construction Contracts apply as implied terms. In England and Wales that is Part I of the Schedule to the Scheme for Construction Contracts (England and Wales) Regulations 1998, SI 1998/649, as amended in 2011. In Scotland it is the Scheme for Construction Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 1998, SI 1998/687, as amended by SSI 2011/371, with the same numbers throughout. A sub-contract that is silent on adjudication has not escaped adjudication; it has simply adopted the Scheme.

Whose contracts this works on

Three questions decide it, and all three have statutory answers.

Is it a construction contract for construction operations? Section 105(1) lists them, and the list is broad: construction, alteration, repair, maintenance, extension, demolition or dismantling of buildings and structures, works forming part of the land, installation of heating, lighting, air conditioning, ventilation, power supply, drainage, sanitation, water supply and fire protection, painting and decorating, and the preparatory site work that goes with all of it. Section 105(2) carves a few things back out, mostly process plant on nuclear, power generation, water treatment, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil, gas, steel and food and drink sites, drilling for oil and gas, mining, and the supply of materials without installation.

Is it in writing? It no longer has to be. Section 107, which used to restrict Part II to contracts in writing, was repealed with effect from 1 October 2011 in England and Wales and 1 November 2011 in Scotland. An oral variation, a job agreed on the phone and confirmed by text, a scope that grew without paperwork: all of it is inside the Act now. Evidence of what was agreed still matters to the adjudicator, but the absence of a signed sub-contract is no longer a door.

Is your customer a residential occupier? Section 106(1) takes contracts with a residential occupier outside Part II, and section 106(2) defines that as a contract which principally relates to operations on a dwelling which one of the parties occupies, or intends to occupy, as his residence. Extending a family's house takes the statutory right to adjudicate off the table, which is why domestic work is a different craft with a different answer, set out in what to do when a homeowner will not pay. Note the shape of the exclusion though: it is about the party to the contract. A landlord, a developer, a housing association or a buy to let investor having work done on a property they do not live in is not a residential occupier, and adjudication runs against them in full.

Northern Ireland has the same regime under its own statute. Article 7 of the Construction Contracts (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, SI 1997/274 (N.I. 1), gives the identical right to refer at any time, with the identical 7 day and 28 day timetable and the identical 14 day extension, backed by the Northern Ireland Scheme under Article 13.

Before the notice: the dispute has to have crystallised

This is the single point at which an otherwise good adjudication gets thrown out on jurisdiction, and it is entirely within your control.

Section 108(1) gives a right to refer a dispute, and adds that "dispute" includes any difference. A dispute exists once a claim has been made and has been rejected, or has gone unanswered for long enough that a rejection can be inferred. What does not exist is a dispute about a claim the other side has not yet seen. Sending a notice of adjudication attached to a figure the payer is hearing for the first time gives them a free jurisdictional argument.

So the sequence before the notice is short and deliberate:

1. Put the claim in writing, in the form the contract calls for, with the figure and the basis for it.
2. Ask for a response by a stated date.
3. Wait. Silence is enough. An express rejection is better. A counter valuation, like the quantity surveyor's £11,400 email, is best of all, because it is the other party writing down that they disagree.

One further piece of hygiene. The referral carries one dispute. Three arguments about the same valuation are one dispute. Three separate valuations, a variation account and a prolongation claim bundled into one notice invite an argument that the adjudicator was appointed on more than he had jurisdiction to decide. Pick the cleanest, largest, most evidenced dispute and refer that. Under paragraph 9 of the Scheme the adjudicator must resign where the dispute is the same or substantially the same as one already decided, so a second, later referral on genuinely different ground stays open to you.

The cleanest dispute of all is a notified sum that went unpaid and drew no pay less notice, because the argument is arithmetic rather than valuation: 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, and the courts settled in Grove Developments Ltd v S&T (UK) Ltd that the payer pays first and argues true value afterwards. That is the referral to run if you have it, and the pay less notice guide is where the two notice deadlines are counted.

The notice of adjudication, and the four things it has to say

Paragraph 1(1) of the Scheme lets any party to a construction contract, called the referring party, give written notice at any time of an intention to refer a dispute to adjudication. Paragraph 1(2) requires it to be given to every other party to the contract. Paragraph 1(3) then sets out what it must contain, and there are four items:

That is the whole statutory requirement. A notice of adjudication is a page and a half, not a pleading. It is not the place to argue the case; the referral does that seven days later.

Two drafting points earn their keep. First, paragraph 1(3)(c), the redress sought, is the boundary of what the adjudicator can award you, so ask for everything you want: the principal sum, interest at the contractual rate and in the alternative under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, the fixed sum under section 5A of that Act, a declaration on any point you need declared, and an order that the responding party pay the adjudicator's fees and expenses. Paragraph 20(c) of the Scheme expressly lets the adjudicator decide the circumstances, the rates and the periods for simple or compound interest, so an interest claim asked for properly is an interest claim awarded. The arithmetic on the statutory rate is in charging interest on a late invoice.

Second, serve it at the address the contract specifies for notices, in the manner the contract specifies, and serve it on the contracting entity rather than on the site team. A notice emailed to a project manager when the sub-contract names a registered office and requires post is a notice worth arguing about.

Getting an adjudicator inside seven days

Paragraph 2 of the Scheme sets the order of who you ask, and it is an order rather than a menu:

1. If the contract names an adjudicator, ask that person.
2. If the contract names an adjudicator nominating body, ask that body to select someone.
3. Otherwise, ask any adjudicator nominating body to select someone.

A person asked to act has to say whether they are willing within two days of the request, under paragraph 2(2). A nominating body has to communicate its selection within five days of receiving the request, under paragraph 5(1), and if it does not, paragraph 5(2) lets you either agree a person with the other party or go to a different nominating body and start again. Paragraph 2(3) defines an adjudicator nominating body simply as a body which holds itself out publicly as one which will select an adjudicator when requested.

In practice you send the notice of adjudication and the application to the nominating body on the same day, because the seven days in section 108(2)(b) runs from the notice, not from the appointment.

The bodies that do this work in the UK are these:

The Adjudication Society, which has over 800 members, publishes the annual Construction Adjudication in the United Kingdom research report with King's College London and runs a professional search of adjudicators, which is where to look up a proposed name before they are appointed.

Choose the body, rather than defaulting. A sub-contract valuation dispute wants a quantity surveyor, which points at RICS. A dispute about the meaning of a clause wants a construction lawyer, which points at TeCSA. A dispute about whether the work was defective wants somebody from that trade's discipline. You cannot pick the individual, but the body you apply to determines the pool they come from, and that choice is yours alone as the referring party.

The referral notice, which is the case

Paragraph 7(1) of the Scheme: the dispute must be referred to the adjudicator not later than seven days from the date of the notice of adjudication. Paragraph 7(2): the referral notice must be accompanied by copies of, or relevant extracts from, the construction contract and such other documents as the referring party intends to rely on. Paragraph 7(3): copies go simultaneously to every other party to the dispute.

This is the document that wins or loses it, and seven days is enough only because you assembled it before you sent the notice. Build the bundle first, send the notice second.

What goes in a referral that works:

• A short chronology with dates, because the adjudicator is reading the job cold and has 28 days.
• The contract, or the order, the programme and any written variations.
• The application, the valuation build up, and the measured or dayworks backup behind each line.
• The absence of a payment notice and the absence of a pay less notice, evidenced by what you did receive rather than asserted.
• Every email in which the other side priced, approved or instructed the work.
• The redress asked for in the notice, restated as a numbered list of what you want the adjudicator to decide.

Keep it proportionate to the sum. A £38,400 dispute referred in forty pages plus tabs is a referral the adjudicator can read in an evening, and an adjudicator who has read everything is an adjudicator who decides for the side that made it easy. A £38,400 dispute referred in four hundred pages is a fee problem you created for yourself.

Where the sum is large or the contract is genuinely unusual, an hour with a construction solicitor before the referral goes out is money well spent, and cheaper at that point than at any later one.

The response, and what the 28 days actually contain

There is no statutory response period. The adjudicator sets the timetable, using the power in paragraph 13 of the Scheme to give directions, request documents, meet and question the parties, visit the site, carry out tests and appoint experts or legal advisers. A typical direction on a straightforward payment dispute gives the responding party seven to fourteen days for a response, then a short reply, and then the adjudicator writes.

Paragraph 19(1) fixes the outer limits. The adjudicator must reach a decision within 28 days of receipt of the referral notice, or 42 days if the referring party consents, or a longer period agreed by the parties after the dispute was referred. Paragraph 19 also requires the decision to be delivered to the parties as soon as possible after it is reached.

What you should expect to be doing in those four weeks is answering the adjudicator quickly. Requests come with short deadlines because the adjudicator is working to a statutory one. A party that answers within hours is materially better placed than a party that answers on the last day.

One real sequence, counted from 7 September 2026

Take that valuation. It went in on 24 July 2026 at £38,400. No payment notice. No pay less notice. Final date for payment Friday 21 August 2026, passed unpaid. Chaser sent 24 August 2026. The quantity surveyor's counter valuation of £11,400 arrives Friday 28 August 2026, which is the day the dispute crystallises, because that is the day the claim was rejected in writing.

You spend the following week building the referral bundle, then send the notice.

Thirty five days from the letter to the money, or forty nine on the long version. Compare that with the same claim issued in the county court in September 2026, where a defended £38,400 claim allocated to the multi-track is a 2027 trial.

What the decision is worth

Section 108(3) requires the contract to provide that the decision of the adjudicator is binding until the dispute is finally determined by legal proceedings, by arbitration if the contract provides for it or the parties agree to it, or by agreement, and paragraph 23(2) of the Scheme says the same in the same words where the Scheme applies. The parties may agree to accept the decision as finally determining the dispute, and a great many decisions end up final simply because neither side takes it further.

Interim binding is the point rather than a weakness in it. Paragraph 21 requires the parties to comply with the decision immediately on delivery. The money moves now, and it stays moved unless and until somebody funds a full trial or arbitration to unpick it. In a dispute of this size, the cost of that trial is usually more than the sum in dispute, which is why the adjudicator's decision is in practice where it stops.

Two smaller mechanics are worth knowing. Section 108(3A) and paragraph 22A of the Scheme give the adjudicator a slip rule to correct a clerical or typographical error, exercisable within five days of delivery, so an obvious arithmetic slip in your favour is fixable rather than fatal. And section 108(4), mirrored in paragraph 26, makes the adjudicator immune from liability except in bad faith, which is why an adjudicator will decide a hard point rather than duck it.

Who pays the adjudicator

Three separate pots of money, and they behave differently.

The nomination fee. Paid up front by the referring party to the nominating body. £450 at TeCSA, £250 under its Low Value Disputes service, comparable sums at the other bodies.

The adjudicator's fees and expenses. Paragraph 25 of the Scheme entitles the adjudicator to such reasonable amount as he determines by way of fees and expenses reasonably incurred, and lets him apportion them between the parties. Section 108A(2)(a) permits a contract term conferring that power, which is what standard forms do. Adjudicators outside a capped scheme charge roughly £250 to £350 an hour plus VAT, and a straightforward payment dispute occupies fifteen to thirty hours. Paragraph 25 also makes the parties jointly and severally liable for anything left outstanding, which matters in one specific situation: if the adjudicator awards the fee against a losing payer who then does not pay it, the adjudicator can come to you for it and you recover it from them. Budget for that possibility rather than being surprised by it.

Your own costs. Each side generally bears its own, and this is where section 108A does its real work. Section 108A(2) makes any contractual provision about the allocation of adjudication costs ineffective unless it is either (a) in writing, 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 the dispute has been given.

That subsection killed the Tolent clause. A sub-contract term saying the referring party shall bear all the costs of any adjudication, however the adjudication turns out, falls outside both limbs of 108A(2) and is ineffective. It was in circulation before 2011 for exactly one purpose, which was to make referring anything unaffordable. If you find one in a sub-contract you are being asked to sign, section 108A is the answer in a sentence, and what a modern sub-contract may lawfully do is give the adjudicator power over his own fee and nothing more.

The low value route that makes a five figure claim worth referring

An uncapped adjudicator's fee is the reason people write off five figure sums. Twenty five hours at £300 is £7,500, and on a £15,000 claim that is not a decision, it is a gamble.

The Low Value Disputes services exist to remove exactly that arithmetic. TeCSA's LVD Adjudication Service, launched after a 2019 pilot, covers claims for fixed amounts of up to £100,000 excluding VAT and interest, charges £250 to nominate instead of £450, and caps the adjudicator's fee by band:

The Construction Industry Council publishes a Low Value Disputes Model Adjudication Procedure on the same principle, and RICS Dispute Resolution Service will appoint across the whole range.

Put the £38,400 claim through both routes and the comparison stops being close.

Worst case £3,750 against £38,400 recovered is a ratio worth doing. That is the reason the low value route exists, and it is the reason a £15,000 retention or a £9,000 variation account is now worth referring rather than writing off.

Enforcing the decision

Enforcement is a separate, short, well worn path, and its speed is deliberate.

The winning party issues a Part 7 claim in the Technology and Construction Court seeking the sum decided, and applies at the same time for summary judgment under Part 24 of the Civil Procedure Rules on the basis that the paying party has no real prospect of defending a decision that is binding under section 108(3).

Paragraph 2 of the Pre-Action Protocol for Construction and Engineering Disputes disapplies the protocol where the proceedings concern the enforcement of the decision of an adjudicator under section 108, and again where the claim will be the subject of an application for summary judgment under Part 24. That single paragraph removes the letter of claim, the acknowledgment period, the response period and the pre-action meeting that a normal construction claim has to grind through. The claim goes straight in, and the TCC lists adjudication enforcement on an abridged timetable, which is why enforcement is measured in weeks rather than terms.

The defences that work against enforcement are narrow and jurisdictional: no construction contract, no crystallised dispute, an adjudicator appointed outside the Scheme's route, a decision on something outside the referral, or a material breach of natural justice. Disagreeing with the answer is not on that list.

Scotland runs the same substantive scheme with a different court and one genuinely better mechanism. Enforcement is through the Court of Session or the sheriff court rather than the TCC, and paragraph 24 of Part I of the Scheme for Construction Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 1998 provides that 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 request forthwith consent to registration by subscribing the decision before a witness. A decision registered that way is enforceable by diligence without starting a fresh court action at all. In Northern Ireland enforcement is through the High Court there, on the same summary basis, with the underlying right sitting in Article 7 of the Construction Contracts (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.

Adjudication also sits alongside the other statutory lever the same non-payment gives you. Section 112(1) gives the person owed an unpaid notified sum the right to suspend performance of any or all of their obligations, on at least seven days' notice stating the grounds under section 112(2), with the costs of stopping and restarting recoverable under section 112(3A) and the time given back under section 112(4). Serving that notice and referring the dispute in the same week is a legitimate pairing, and it is set out in suspending work for non-payment.

What it costs

Adjudication costs what the nominating body and the adjudicator charge, and under the low value route you know your ceiling before you start: £250 to nominate at TeCSA and a capped fee of between £2,000 and £5,000 depending on the band. There is no fee payable to any court unless and until you enforce.

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, the dates they went in, what came back and what did not, and the retention still outstanding all sit against the job, which is the evidence a referral notice is built out of. Assembling seven days of bundle from records that already exist is the difference between referring a dispute and deciding it is too much trouble.

Open your jobs and invoices, find the oldest application that drew no answer, and check the date the final date for payment went by.