Writing a pay less notice that survives
A pay less notice reading "defects" is a notice a tribunal disregards. The basis is the notice; the sum is just a number on it.
A pay less notice is the payer’s one lawful route to paying less than the notified sum, and section 111 sets two conditions on it: it must be in time, and it must state the sum considered due together with the basis on which that sum was calculated. The first condition is a date and people do generally get it right. The second is a sentence, and it is where notices fail.
"Defects" is not a basis. Neither is "incomplete works", "as discussed" or "see attached". A basis is the calculation: which items, measured at what, against what, and why the difference. A notice that does not contain one is a notice the other side can treat as ineffective, which puts the payer back where they started — liable for the full notified sum.
What a basis looks like
"Blockwork to grid 4–7 rejected at joint inspection on 24 November and to be rebuilt; £38,000 of the sum applied for is against work that will be taken down." That is arguable. Somebody on the other side can agree with it, dispute the measure, or produce the inspection record. It names the work, the event, the date and the money.
The test is simple and it is worth applying before anything goes out: could the other side answer this? If the only possible response is "answer what?", the notice has not done its job.
Holding the standard mechanically
CONSTRUX refuses a pay-less notice whose basis is shorter than twenty characters. That is a crude rule and it is deliberately crude — it does not judge the quality of the reasoning, it simply makes the one-word notice impossible to issue by accident at half past five on the deadline. Everything else about the notice is computed: the date it is due by, which period it belongs to, and what the notified sum was.
The notice itself lands on the same record as the application it answers and the certificate beside it, so the sequence is readable a year later without anybody reconstructing it from an inbox. That matters more than it sounds. Most payment disputes are not disagreements about the work. They are disagreements about what was said, when, and whether it arrived in time. Each notice carries a content hash, so the version the other side received is the version that can be checked a year later.
See the record being made rather than described.
Launch the demo environment