Counting the days, the way the Act counts them
Every payment deadline on a UK job is a day count, and the Construction Act counts days its own way. QScope does the arithmetic so the timeline is enforceable, not approximate.
QScope Team · 27 January 2026 · 6 min read
The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 runs on dates, and getting the dates wrong is how good positions are lost. The timeline is not complicated, but it is exact, and a count done in your head over a holiday period is usually wrong. QScope does the counting so the deadlines it flags are the ones a court or an adjudicator would recognise.
The timeline QScope builds
| Point | Rule |
|---|---|
| Due date | As the contract sets it |
| Payment notice | Within five days of the due date (s.110A) |
| Final date for payment | As the contract sets it, Scheme default seventeen days after the due date |
| Pay less notice | Not later than the prescribed period before the final date, Scheme default seven days |
QScope takes the due date from the valuation and lays the rest of the timeline out from it, using whichever periods the contract actually specifies and falling back to the Scheme for Construction Contracts only where the contract is silent.
Section 116, the part people get wrong
Section 116 counts in calendar days but excludes Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays. A seven day period that crosses the late December holidays does not end seven calendar days later. QScope strips out the statutory non-days when it counts, so a deadline near a holiday period lands on the date the Act produces, not the date a wall calendar suggests.
Why the timeline feeds everything else
The same timeline drives three things: the notice engine that flags the payment notice and pay less notice deadlines, the cash flow forecast that places the receipt at the final date, and any adjudication reference that turns on whether a notice was in time. Because all three read one calculated timeline, they cannot disagree with each other.
When it goes to adjudication
Adjudication under the Act is fast and turns on dates as much as on merits. A smash and grab succeeds because a notice was late, not because the valuation was wrong. QScope holds the dated timeline and the notices served against it, so if a dispute is referred, the record of what was due when, and what was served when, is already assembled rather than reconstructed under a twenty eight day timetable.
QScope makes the timeline the reliable thing on the job, so the dates are never what beats you.
QScope builds the payment timeline from the due date under the Construction Act, counting days per section 116 so the notice deadlines and any adjudication reference rest on the enforceable dates.