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Before relying on silence, confirm no notice was served

An empty inbox is not proof that no Payment Notice was given. Before treating your application as the sum due, check every agreed channel, including any portal, and ask your main contractor to confirm in writing.

Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.

If the whole notice window has passed without a word, see what to do when no Payment Notice or Pay Less Notice came.

Why it matters

With no Payment Notice and no Pay Less Notice, your application can stand as the notified sum: the sum that must then be paid. That is worth acting on quickly. But the argument collapses if a notice turns up on a portal nobody checked. It also collapses if a notice went to an address the contract names and nobody reads. A demand for the full application, built on a silence that was not really silence, costs you credibility. You will need that credibility for the next cycle. Checking the channels first takes an hour. It turns an assumption into a fact you can rely on.

How to do it

  1. Save your application as sent, with its calculation, attachments and the evidence of when and how it went.
  2. List every channel the contract allows for notices, including any portal and any named address, and check each one.
  3. Ask your main contractor in writing to confirm whether it gave a Payment Notice or Pay Less Notice for the cycle, and when.
  4. Set the dates from the signed subcontract beside what you found: the due date, the notice windows and the final date for payment.
  5. Decide only then whether your application stands as the notified sum, and take advice where the route is unclear.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A subcontractor's Application 05 for £44,000 goes by email to the address the subcontract names. The Payment Notice window passes with nothing in the commercial manager's inbox, and he wants to demand the full £44,000.

What happens

  1. The application, its send receipt and the dates are saved first.
  2. The subcontract also allows payment documents on the project portal. The portal shows an assessment for £39,000, uploaded on the last day of the window, that nobody had downloaded.
  3. Both records are kept with their timestamps, and the assessment is checked for its sender, sum and basis.
  4. It states the sum and how it was calculated, so the demand for £44,000 is not sent.
  5. The £5,000 difference, a disputed measured item, goes into Application 06 with the remeasure attached.

The outcome

A demand that would have failed on the first reply is never sent. The £5,000 is argued on the measure, where it belongs. A portal check joins the routine for every cycle.

To have this done for you, see our Underpayment Claim service.