Who issues a Pay Less Notice?

The payer, or a specified person the contract expressly names to give notices for the payer, commonly the contract administrator, employer's agent or quantity surveyor. A Pay Less Notice is the notice used to pay less than the sum otherwise due, and it only ever travels down the payment chain, from the party paying to the party being paid: employer to main contractor, then main contractor to subcontractor, each link a separate contract with its own payer and notices. The payee never serves one; a payee who disagrees has other routes: apply for the right figure, adjudicate, the fast 28 day process, or, after at least 7 days' warning, suspend work for non payment. A document headed Pay Less Notice coming up the chain from your own payee has no legal effect. Check the contract really gives the sender the authority, because a notice from someone without it is open to challenge whatever the figures say.

On a leisure centre chain the employer pays the main contractor, and the main contractor pays a plastering subcontractor. To withhold from the main contractor, the employer's named agent serves the Pay Less Notice down that link. To withhold from the plasterer, the main contractor serves its own notice down the next link. When the plasterer fires back a document it calls a Pay Less Notice up to the main contractor, it has no legal effect, because notices never travel upwards; the plasterer's real options are to apply for the right figure, adjudicate, or suspend on 7 days' notice. Before relying on any notice, first check whether the sender was authorised by that contract to give it.