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If you decide to engage a contractor to carry out work on premises which is of a construction nature, even for a one-off project, you must ensure that you are careful to follow the payment terms in your contract or there could be serious consequences.
In general, commercial construction contracts will contain a mechanism for payment including the need for interim payments. If yours does not, the default position under statute is that the contractor will make an application for payment with the amount claimed and the date it will fall due. Not later than 5 days after the due date specified in the notice, the party contracting will issue a payment notice to the contractor. The payment notice will detail the sum that it considers to be due and the basis on which that sum is calculated.
If a payment notice is not served then the contractor can effectively provide its own notice in default confirming the sum it believes is due. There will be one more opportunity for the contracting party to dispute the sum by serving what is known as a payless notice which will specify the sum they are paying and the reasoning behind this. However, if this is missed then as long as the contractors initial application is valid then the amount in it will become due despite the true value of the works.
This scenario will lead to a contractor being able to enforce the sum by way of an adjudication and then if needs be via the County Court for enforcement, which could be financially disastrous for the paying party. The best way to avoid this is to make sure you are on top of project managing a construction contract and ensuring all dates for payments are effectively logged and recorded to ensure they are not missed.