My retention is being held long after it should have moved
The job is done, the defects are closed or nearly closed, and the retention still sits on their ledger.
What's happening?
Retention is the easiest money in construction to withhold, because releasing it requires the payer to do something and every month of not doing it is free cash flow at your expense. The certificate that triggers release is never quite issued, the making good never quite signed off, and the sums are individually small enough that chasing them feels uneconomic, which is why the tactic persists across whole supply chains.
But release is not a favour, it is a contractual event. The contract names the triggers, usually half at practical completion and the rest after making good, and where the certificate is withheld unreasonably the entitlement can be examined and pursued without it. Old retentions are worth revisiting: the entitlement does not lapse just because time has passed, though contractual limitation periods do eventually apply.
The solution
Establish the trigger, then recover what it released.