Subcontractors Blueprint

Subcontractors Blueprint The place for Subcontractor Education and Support

A lot of subcontractors back down when they push back on a clause.They don’t want to be seen as difficult. They don’t wa...
30/04/2026

A lot of subcontractors back down when they push back on a clause.

They don’t want to be seen as difficult. They don’t want to lose the job before it starts.

But challenging a non-compliant payment clause isn’t being difficult. It’s requiring the contractor to follow the law. Section 110(1A) of the Construction Act is on your side. The scheme for construction contracts is on your side. Every adjudicator who’s looked at this is on your side.

You’re not the problem. The clause is.

Full breakdown in episode 140 of The Subcontractors Blueprint.

28/04/2026

You're five months into a fast-paced commercial fit-out. You've applied for £85,000, including £12,000 of retention you're entitled to under your subcontract.
The main contractor pays £62,000. No retention release.

Their reason: the retention clause says it's held until the employer issues a certificate under the main contract.

That clause is void. It has been since 2011!

Section 110(1A) of the Construction Act prevents payment from being conditional on obligations under a different contract. Your subcontract and the main contract are two separate agreements. The employer's certificate has no place in your payment mechanism.

You can challenge it. Re-issue the application. The law is on your side.

Episode 140 of The Subcontractors Blueprint covers this in full.

21/04/2026

I think suspension of works is the most powerful payment lever in your JCT contract for getting an overdue payment. I've watched contractors move fast the moment that notice lands.

Termination looks decisive. It isn't. It's also incredibly easy to get wrong!

The moment you terminate, you lose all future turnover from that contract. You leave a part-finished job behind. And if you've done it wrong, you're in breach — not them.

The court's position on this is clear: use the tools already built into the contract first.

You have three: the right to interest on late payments, the right to suspend works, and the right to adjudicate.

The suspension right is the one with teeth.

If you haven't been paid seven days past the due date, you serve a notice that day. Not the following week. That day. The notice tells them: pay within seven days or we pull off.

Nobody wants to be the contractor who caused the programme to fail. That notice puts the decision in their hands — and most of the time, they find the money quickly.

What you cannot do is walk off site without serving that notice first. That's not suspension. That's abandonment. And it puts you in breach.

This week I've broken down four recent cases in Episode 139 - Case Law Coffee Break. Tune in for Four Rulings That Shape Your Payment Rights

14/04/2026

£180,000 applied for. £40,000 paid. No pay-less notice served. The contractor had to pay the full amount.

Under the HGCRA 1996, that contractor was required to pay the full notified sum.

The work wasn’t finished. There was a live dispute about what it was worth. None of that mattered.

Because the mechanism isn’t about what the job is worth — it’s about what was applied for and whether the correct notice was served to challenge it.
This is the smash-and-grab adjudication route.

The paying party has a defined window to serve a payment notice and then a pay-less notice. Miss the deadline — or serve a notice that’s missing the required breakdown — and the notified sum becomes the amount due. All of it.
S&T v Grove confirmed it. Pay the notified sum first. If they want to argue the true value was lower, they do that in a subsequent adjudication — after the cash has moved.

But it only works if your application was right in the first place.

If your application doesn’t clearly state the sum and the basis of calculation — if it’s vague, or references last month’s figure without a proper breakdown — the mechanism falls apart before the argument even starts.

Your application needs to work as a statutory payment notice. Fully calculated. Sum stated. Breakdown traceable.

Know your payment cycle dates. Know when the pay-less window closes. When it closes without a valid notice — don’t wait and see.

Adjudicate. The statutory right is there. The decision can come in 28 days. And the cash moves before anyone argues about value.

That’s the mechanism. It exists. It rarely gets used.

The Subcontractors Blueprint — wherever you get your podcasts.

I didn’t start The Subcontractors Blueprint because I had all the answers.I started it because I kept watching the same ...
11/04/2026

I didn’t start The Subcontractors Blueprint because I had all the answers.

I started it because I kept watching the same mistakes cost the same people money.

The missed notices. The half-read contracts. The missing records that would make final accounts stronger.

Subcontractors who were technically brilliant — and commercially exposed without knowing it.

Two and a half years later, I’ve covered a lot of ground.

And my most downloaded episode is episode 88.
Contract management.

Not because it’s complicated. Because it isn’t — and that’s exactly why it gets ignored.

The contract doesn’t cost you money by being complex. It costs you money because the people managing it never properly read it. They rely on what they’ve been told, what they’ve always done, what seems obvious.

And the gap between what they believe they’re entitled to and what they can actually recover — that gap is where the money goes.

Episode 88 breaks down what good contract management actually looks like in practice. Not theory. Not a checklist for its own sake. The habits, the systems, and the mindset that protect your position from day one.

If you run a subcontracting business in the UK and you haven’t heard it — it’s a good place to start.
The Subcontractors Blueprint. On all major podcast platforms.

I think this is the biggest single hammer blow a subcontractor can suffer under a letter of intent.Not the cap itself. T...
10/04/2026

I think this is the biggest single hammer blow a subcontractor can suffer under a letter of intent.

Not the cap itself. The moment you pass it — and you know you're passing it — but you keep going anyway.

Because stopping feels worse.

The plant is committed. The contractor and their team are on site. The programme is running. And if you down tools now, the delay lands at your door.

So you carry on. You tell yourself the formal contract is coming. You tell yourself it'll get sorted. And by the time the argument starts, you've spent £550,000 under a document that only ever committed to £300,000.

That's not a cash flow problem. That's unrecoverable cost.
The courts have ruled on this consistently. The cap is the cap.

You cannot spend past it on the assumption that a formal contract will follow and pick up the difference.

The protection is simple — but it has to happen before you hit the limit, not after.

Episode 137 of The Subcontractors Blueprint covers exactly this scenario in full.

I've seen letters of intent expressed in a two-line email. I've also seen them run to a document that effectively introd...
08/04/2026

I've seen letters of intent expressed in a two-line email. I've also seen them run to a document that effectively introduces a full subcontract — with caps, caveats, and conditions throughout.

That gulf in scope is exactly what makes them hard to manage.

But across all of it, the same themes keep appearing. The same traps. The same assumptions that end up costing money.

The financial cap is real — and courts enforce it. You can't spend past it on the basis that a formal contract will follow.

Variations without agreed valuation rules leave you in no-man's land when scope shifts — and it always shifts.

Payment terms that are silent or ambiguous create a dispute before you've argued about anything else.

None of this means refusing to work under one. It means going in with your eyes open.

Know your cap. Chase the formal contract in writing. Get payment and change terms agreed before you mobilise.

The Supreme Court's own words on this: agree first, start work later.

Episode 137 of The Subcontractors Blueprint covers letters of intent in full — what they are commercially, where the traps are, and what to do before you crack on.

07/04/2026

When I put this episode together, one thing stood out. The same scenario. Different subcontractors. Different projects. Same outcome. A financial cap that was there in black and white — and cost them anyway.

Letters of intent vary enormously in what they actually cover. And that variation is where the danger lives.

You might feel protected having one. But that protection has limits — and they tend to show up at the worst possible moment.

No rules on how to value variations. Payment terms that are silent or ambiguous. And a financial cap that stops dead the moment you've spent past it, whether the formal contract arrived or not.

This isn't a hypothetical. The TCC, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court have all heard versions of this story. Every single time, the lesson is the same.
The Supreme Court put it plainly: agree first, start work later.

The construction industry doesn't work that way. Which means if you're going to work under a letter of intent — and at some point, you probably will — you need to understand exactly what it is, what it isn't, and where the traps are.

Because the cap is real. Courts enforce it. And you can't spend past it on the assumption that a formal contract will follow and pick up the difference.

Episode 137 of The Subcontractors Blueprint covers exactly this — what letters of intent actually mean commercially, and what to do before you mobilise on the back of one.

06/04/2026

“Can’t” doesn’t cost you the attempt. It costs you the ambition.

Michael Phelps had one rule drilled into him from a young age.

Remove the word can’t from your vocabulary. Completely.

Not because everything is easy. Not because failure doesn’t exist. But because the moment you say can’t — you’ve already made the decision. The race is over before you’ve laced your boots.

Phelps went on to do things people hadn’t dreamt of. Or were too afraid to dream of.

That second part is the one that should hit you.
Too afraid to dream of.

In construction, I see this all the time. Subbies who don’t tender for the bigger contract. Don’t hire the extra person. Don’t push into a new sector. Not because they tried and it didn’t work — but because they ruled it out before they even picked up the pen.

That’s what “can’t” does. It doesn’t just stop the attempt. It kills the ambition quietly, long before any decision gets made.

You’ll never know what you were capable of if you talk yourself out of it first.

So this week — what’s the thing you’ve been calling impossible? -The contract. -The hire. -The next level.

Is it actually impossible? Or have you just not removed “can’t” from the conversation yet? Drop it below. 👇

In light of the retention ban, subcontractors need to adopt new strategies to protect their interests. Keeping thorough ...
03/04/2026

In light of the retention ban, subcontractors need to adopt new strategies to protect their interests.

Keeping thorough records and getting every instruction in writing are now more crucial than ever.

Also, understanding your contract terms can help mitigate disputes over payments.

Fun fact: The new law requires mandatory interest on late payments, set at 8% above the Bank of England base rate. This means, if payments are late, interest will automatically accrue, incentivising timely payments.

With the retention ban, retention bonds are expected to become the new norm. These bonds allow subcontractors to keep their cash while providing clients with the security they need.

However, accessing these bonds depends on a subcontractor’s financial health. Smaller firms may find it challenging to secure these bonds, which could impact their ability to take on larger contracts.

It’s regularly stated that bonding capacity is “earned, not assumed,” so early engagement with a broker is crucial to understand the costs and terms involved.

Stay prepared and informed! Ep. 136 of The Subcontractors Blueprint has the details.

⚠️ Are you surprised? Payment issues are the most common cause of disputes for subcontractors.(Click below to listen 👇🏼)...
24/07/2024

⚠️ Are you surprised? Payment issues are the most common cause of disputes for subcontractors.

(Click below to listen 👇🏼)

These issues can stem from various factors, including scope of work changes, delays, charges for defects, and different site conditions.

To deal with late payments, consider issuing a seven-day notice to the contractor, informing them that they have seven days to sort out the payment or you’ll suspend work.

This approach can prompt quick action from the contractor, as they won’t want to be responsible for project delays.

Always communicate clearly and promptly about issuing a notice to make clear that it isn’t an exercise in falling out, but to protect your business and ensure you can pay your lads on time.

Click below to learn about the ten most common subcontract disputes and what you can do about them 👇🏼

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