On Thursday last week Judge Havery QC held (in Aveat v Jerram Falkus, TCC) that the adjudication rules in the Government’s GC/Works suite of standard form contracts are invalid.
One sentence in the rules ("The adjudicator’s decision shall nevertheless be valid if issued after the time allowed") was inconsistent with the requirements of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. As a result the entire set of rules fell and the statutory Scheme’s adjudication rules applied instead.
This meant that the adjudicator had no jurisdiction to award the referring party its costs and expenses as, unlike the GC/Works rules, the Scheme makes no provision for this. That part, and only that part, of the adjudicator’s decision was invalid, but the rest of the decision was enforced. This might comfort those who have yet to receive payment in respect of adjudicators’ decisions reached under invalid rules like the GC/Works, CIC and ICE rules (although not all the relevant cases seem
