When an adjudicator gets it wrong, construction professionals often see Part 8 as a quick way to overturn an adjudicator’s award without a full trial. United Utilities Water Ltd v Northstone (NI) Ltd (t/a Farrans Construction) [2026] is a reminder that the gateway for Part 8 is extremely narrow and reserved only for short and self-contained questions that do not require a deep dive into factual history.
What happened?
United Utilities and Farrans worked under a heavily amended NEC3 contract that later switched from Option C to Option A with a new milestone payment regime and shorter payment periods.
In 2024, Farrans applied for payment via CEMAR, the platform used to administer payments, which generated dates based on the old contract terms. United Utilities rejected the milestone and issued payment notice PA-70 showing a negative “amount due” of around -£3.27m, arguing Farrans had missed the deadline for serving a valid pay less notice. The adjudicator agreed and ordered Farrans to pay.
Farrans resisted enforcement, arguing under Part 8 proceedings that PA-70 was invalid because of the CEMAR date errors and the ambiguous negative sum.
What did the TCC decide?
- Whether PA-70 was valid depended on how a reasonable recipient would have understood it. That needed factual evidence on how CEMAR was used, what the parties understood about the date mismatch, and the logic behind the contract changes.
- Farrans hadn’t put forward that evidence, so couldn’t show a realistic prospect of success. In any event, this wasn’t a “short, self-contained” issue, so Part 8 was the wrong vehicle entirely.
- The Court enforced the adjudicator’s decision, ordering Farrans to pay the £3.27m award and transferred the dispute to a full Part 7 trial.
What can we learn from this?
Part 8 isn’t a shortcut to defeating adjudication enforcement while you fight about the facts later. If a judge needs to see evidence to understand what was actually intended, it’s not a Part 8 case.
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This article contains information of general interest about current legal issues, but does not provide legal advice. It is prepared for the general information of our clients and other interested parties. This article should not be relied upon in any specific situation without appropriate legal advice. If you require legal advice on any of the issues raised in this article, please contact one of our specialist construction lawyers.
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