Getting Paid: Construction Payment Rights, Retentions and Adjudication Guide

Getting Paid: The Construction Professional's Guide to Payment Rights, Retentions, and Cash Flow Protection

UK construction has the highest insolvency rate of any sector. Late payments, withheld retentions, and ignored payment applications are not just frustrating. They are business-ending. And most contractors have no idea how many legal rights they already have to stop it happening.

The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 gives every UK contractor and subcontractor four powerful statutory rights: the right to regular interim payments, the right to payment notices, the right to adjudication, and the right to suspend performance for non-payment. Most contractors are not using them.

This guide gives you the practical knowledge to protect your payment rights on every project, from the first payment application to the final account.

What you will learn:

How the payment notice regime works, when to issue a default payment notice, and why missing the deadline costs you money. How to identify an invalid pay less notice and what to do when you receive one. How to use the smash and grab adjudication to recover the full notified sum when a payer has not served a valid pay less notice. How to recover overdue retentions, including the 2025 government reform proposals and the new retention reporting rules in force from January 2026. Why pay when paid clauses cannot be used against you and how to challenge them. How to suspend performance for non-payment under Section 112 without breaching your contract. How adjudication works, what it costs, and how to use it on a live project without waiting for the project to finish. How to protect yourself when a client or main contractor goes insolvent. Practical templates including a default payment notice, a suspension notice, a payment application checklist, and a retention recovery checklist.

This guide is written in plain language with clause references throughout, worked examples, and templates you can put to use today. No legal background required.

A single overdue retention or withheld payment application recovered using this guide will pay for it many times over.

15 Chapters | Practical Templates and Checklists | Instant Download | 2026 Edition | Updated for the Latest UK Late Payment Reforms