New regulations on late payment

In the latest instalment of her legal digest, construction lawyer Najma Dunnett looks at the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations.

In these economically challenging times, businesses, especially those in the construction sector, need all the help they can get in encouraging prompt payment and aiding cash flow. Indeed poor payment practices, rife in the construction industry, blight many businesses and contributed to the introduction of the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1998. Now, further help is at hand in the form of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations 2013 which came into force on 16 March.

The Regulations amend the Act by imposing limits on payment periods of:

• 30 calendar days when the purchaser of goods/services is a public authority.
• 60 calendar days when the purchaser is another business, but this can be extended if expressly agreed in the contract and provided it is not grossly unfair to the supplier.

Read the article in full....

CIOB competition winners

The winner of the 2013 Chartered Institute of Building article competition is… Mark Wilson for his article insulation specification. Mark is principal at the Leeds-based practice, Design Office Architectural Ltd, and developer of BuildingDesignExpert.com. His article looks at the realities of insulation, how installations on site rarely achieve manufacturers’ published performance standards, and what sort of insulation is appropriate where.

The four runners-up are:

• Norman McIntosh from Roundhouse Architecture, for his detailed and practical guide to conical roof slating.
• Charles Hippisley-Cox, Senior Lecturer in Building Conservation at the Department of Architecture & 3d Design at Huddersfield University for his extraordinary article on the use of spiders to eradicate woodworm. Woodworm and spiders.
• Rachael Browne, sixth year MArch student at The Robert Gordon University Aberdeen for her beautifully written article about the history and regeneration of the Ballymun high-rise development in Dublin. Ballymun mass housing and regeneration.
• Oliver Latimer, a 2013 graduate in Civil Engineering MEng from Loughborough University for his article on the relative merits of a dynamic rather than static briefing process. Dynamic briefing.

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