HOW MANY 'DISPUTES' HAVE BEEN REFERRED TO ADJUDICATION?

In Witney Town Council v Beam Construction (Cheltenham) Ltd [2011] All ER (D) 141 (Sep), [2011] EWHC 2332 (TCC), Mr Justice Akenhead held that there was only one dispute between the parties by the time of the service of the notice of adjudication and that only one dispute had been referred to adjudication. He therefore rejected the claimants’ challenge to the validity of the adjudicator’s decision and held that the defendants were entitled to enforce it. While the conclusion that there was only one dispute very much depended upon the facts of the case, Akenhead J helpfully sought to re-state the principles which should be applied by a court when considering whether a party has attempted to refer more than one dispute to adjudication.

The facts

Witney Town Council, the claimants, entered into a contract with the defendants, Beam Construction (Cheltenham) Ltd, under which the defendants agreed to design and construct a new community hall in Witney. The contract between the parties was in the JCT Design and Build form 2005, Revision 2, 2009 and contained an adjudication clause. Unfortunately, the relationship between the parties was marred by a number of disputes which culminated on 23 March 2011 in the claimants purporting to terminate the contract between the parties on the ground that the defendants were not proceeding regularly and diligently with the works and that they had failed to do so, notwithstanding that they had been served with what was said to have been a contractual warning notice on 21 February 2011. The various disputes between the parties encompassed matters such as the date on which practical completion of the works was achieved, the extent to which the defendants were entitled to an extension of time and the sums payable by the claimants to the defendants under both the ‘draft final account’ dated 21 January 2011 and the ‘final account’ dated 2 March 2011.