Builder Running Late? Delays & Liquidated Damages UK

Twelve weeks was the promise; you’re in week nineteen and the scaffold is still up. Delay is one of the most common complaints in domestic building, and one where your position depends almost entirely on what was written down at the start.

First, is the delay actually unexcused?

Programmes legitimately move. Before reaching for remedies, separate the causes:

• Your changes, every variation with a time effect moved the date; so did late decisions on tiles, colours and fittings.
• Genuinely unforeseen work, opened-up problems add real time.
• Weather, external trades lose days to it; contracts usually excuse exceptional weather, not ordinary drizzle.
• The builder’s own doing, under-resourcing your job while running three others, supplier problems of their own making, or plain slow progress. This is the unexcused category the remedies below exist for.

A well-run job records extensions as they happen (“+3 days, rot repair, agreed 4 May”) so the current contractual completion date is always known. If your project never did this, reconstructing it from messages and the site diary is step one.

Liquidated damages: the clean solution

A liquidated damages (LDs) clause states a fixed sum per week of unexcused overrun, commonly £100–£500/week on domestic work, and it should be a genuine pre-estimate of your likely loss (alternative accommodation, storage, extra childcare), not a punishment figure plucked from anger. Courts uphold honest pre-estimates; since 2015 a clause is struck down as a penalty only if the sum is out of all proportion to your legitimate interest in the work being finished on time.¹

With LDs in place, late completion becomes deduction, not litigation: you withhold the stated sum from remaining payments, in writing, with the calculation shown. JCT Minor Works includes the mechanism, with the rate and period set against its clause 2.8.² The Home Owner form doesn’t, leaving you with general damages instead.

No LDs clause? You still have rights

Where the contract fixes a date without LDs, unexcused overrun is a breach and you can claim actual, provable losses, rent, storage, wasted time off work, through the normal escalation route. Where no date was fixed at all, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 implies completion within a reasonable time; persistent drift beyond what comparable jobs take (benchmark honestly, a loft conversion typically takes around 8–12 weeks on site) is still actionable, just fuzzier.³ Fuzzier is expensive: this is why the contract checklist insists on dates.

Managing a live overrun

Remedies aside, you mostly want the job finished:

1. Name the problem early. “We’re three weeks behind the agreed date, what’s the recovery plan?” in writing, at week 3, beats fury at week 9.
2. Ask for a resourced recovery programme, which trades, which days, finishing when. Vague reassurance (“we’ll crack on”) predicts nothing.
3. Protect the payment position. Stages tied to milestones mean a slow job is at least not draining money ahead of work. Never advance money to “help them finish faster”, it does the opposite.
4. Set a longstop. A final written date after which you’ll treat the contract as at an end and complete with others, deducting the difference. Follow the termination steps properly before acting on it.

When late becomes abandoned

Gaps between visits stretching past a fortnight without explanation stop being “late” and start being abandonment, a different, more serious situation with its own playbook covered in the disputes series. The distinction matters legally, so keep dated notes of attendance; your record of who was on site when is the spine of any later claim.

This guide is general information for homeowners in England and Wales, not legal advice.