Amendments to the Construction Act are now live. All contracts entered into after 1 October 2011 , whether oral or in writing, will fall under the jurisdiction of the Act.
There are 2 main issues to be aware of in our view. The first, the fact that oral contracts now benefit from the statutory provisiions on payment and adjudication. The second, and perhaps the most significant aspect of the revisions, is the introduction of “Pay Less Notices”. The canny contractor may well use the new default notice provisions to enhance returns whereas the employer/contractor who is ignorant of the “Pay Less” regime may well find itself exposed to claims that it can’t do much about.
To some extent the effects of the Act can be mitigated by contractors getting in place terms and conditions for both their subcontractors and clients. For simple contracts we suggest a single page set of t&c’s should suffice. Even more important though is for contractors to get to grips with the new payment regime which the act implements. To view slides of a presentation we recently gave click here.