Adjudication · May 2026
The 28-day timetable: what it really demands of the parties
Statutory adjudication is fast by design. Understanding the timetable before a dispute crystallises is often the difference between a persuasive referral and a rushed one.
Under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, an adjudicator must ordinarily reach a decision within twenty-eight days of the referral. That period can be extended by fourteen days with the referring party's consent, or by a longer period if both parties agree — but the default is short, and it runs from the referral, not from the notice of adjudication.
In practice the pressure falls hardest on the responding party, who may have only days to answer a referral that has been months in preparation. For referring parties, the lesson is to assemble the contract, the payment history and the supporting valuations before serving notice. For responding parties, early engagement with the underlying records — rather than the rhetoric — tends to produce the most useful response within the time available.
— Andrew Howard, ADHPRO Consulting
Expert Evidence · April 2026
What instructing solicitors should expect from a Part 35 report
An expert's duty is to the tribunal, not to the party paying the fee. A report that forgets this helps no one.
Part 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules, the accompanying Practice Direction and the RICS Surveyors Acting as Expert Witnesses Practice Statement set a clear standard: independent, objective evidence within the expert's area of competence, with the basis of every opinion stated and any range of opinion acknowledged.
A well-constructed report distinguishes fact from assumption, identifies the documents relied upon, and is candid about the limits of the available evidence. Where instructions are incomplete or the records are thin, the report should say so rather than paper over the gap. Solicitors are well served by an expert who will tell them early where a case is weak — it is far less costly to hear it before exchange than under cross-examination.
— Andrew Howard, ADHPRO Consulting
Dispute Resolution · March 2026
Adjudication, expert determination or mediation?
Choosing the right forum at the outset can save months of cost and preserve a commercial relationship worth keeping.
Adjudication offers a quick, enforceable decision and a statutory right that cannot be contracted out of — but the decision is interim-binding, and the speed has a price in the depth of analysis possible. Expert determination can be well suited to discrete questions of valuation or technical fact, producing a final and binding outcome where the parties want certainty on a narrow point. Mediation resolves nothing by imposition, but where the parties still have a relationship to protect it frequently achieves what an imposed decision cannot.
The right choice depends on what the parties actually need: speed, finality, a continuing relationship, or simply a clear answer on quantum. It is worth taking that decision deliberately, rather than defaulting to the most familiar route.
— Andrew Howard, ADHPRO Consulting