I have an application or notice to serve and the clock is running
Our application, or our own notice, is due in days or hours, and it has to be right first time.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
If their Payment Notice has already landed and looks wrong, see what to do when their Payment Notice is wrong and the final date is close.
What's happening?
Your application protects the cycle only if it goes in properly. The same goes for your own default notice. That is the notice you can send under section 110B of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 when your main contractor has sent nothing. Properly means on the right date, to the named recipient, by a route the subcontract allows, stating the sum and how you worked it out.
Under pressure, the same mistakes come up. The deadline is counted from the wrong day. The application goes to the site team, not the address the subcontract names. Or the sum has no calculation behind it. A template sorts out the content. It cannot fix the date, the route or who signs it.
A correct figure sent the wrong way can cost you the cycle as surely as a wrong one. Miss the date and the application may fall into the next cycle, a month later. Send it the wrong way and your main contractor can argue it was never served.
The solution
Fix the real deadline first, using the subcontract's own rules for counting days and serving documents. Then build the application or notice in the form the subcontract requires, stating the sum and how it is worked out. Send it to the named recipient by a permitted route, and keep the proof of sending on the day.
Underpayment Claim handles this the same day where you instruct early. We confirm the deadline in writing, prepare or check the document, and send it back with instructions for you to serve it in your own name. Underpayment Prevention stops the next one arriving this close.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
On a Wednesday, a groundworks subcontractor realises its monthly application for £96,000 must go in by the Friday. Its amended subcontract moved the application date from the last Friday of the month to the 25th. It also names a head office address for payment documents.
What happens
- The subcontract is read that afternoon. The application must state the sum considered due and its basis, and go to the named address by email and recorded post.
- The measure is finished on the Thursday. Each line of the £96,000 is traced to the measure, the variation register and the photographs.
- The commercial director signs it, and it goes on the Friday morning by both routes. The email delivery receipt and the postal receipt are filed against the cycle.
- The main contractor's Payment Notice arrives inside its window at £91,000, questioning one £5,000 measured item.
The cycle in figures
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Application | £96,000 |
| Payment Notice | £91,000 |
| Measured item agreed the following month | £5,000 |
The outcome
The £5,000 item is agreed on remeasure the following month. Nobody argues that the application was late or went to the wrong place.