Can a Payment Notice be a Pay Less Notice?

Sometimes. A Payment Notice is the payer's statement of the sum due for the round; a Pay Less Notice is the separate notice that cuts a sum down before it is paid. Courts judge a notice by what it says to a sensible reader, not by its heading, so one document can do both jobs, but only if served inside both windows and its figures make sense for both dates the notices are measured against. A Payment Notice is measured as at the Due Date, the date the payment obligation is fixed, a Pay Less Notice as at the day it is served, so a document that only reads as one counts as that one alone. Because getting this wrong can leave the full Notified Sum, the amount that legally must be paid, falling due, serve each notice separately, in its own window, clearly labelled.

A main contractor's surveyor, three days after the Due Date, sends one certificate valuing a demolition subcontractor's work at £40,000 against a £55,000 application, deductions set out. Because it landed inside the 5 day window and speaks as at the Due Date, it works as a Payment Notice and £40,000 becomes the Notified Sum. If a defect emerges later and the contractor wants to withhold a further £6,000, that certificate cannot stretch to cover it, because it was never framed as at a later date. Serving a fresh Pay Less Notice for the £6,000, in its own window, is the safe course.