---

‘Unfortunate’ perception of construction arbitration

Speakers at a Law Society conference on litigation have called on solicitors to become more familiar with two areas of legislation that they may have overlooked.

The Litigation Committee Annual Update 2024, held in collaboration with Law Society Professional Training, took place on 23 October.

The conference heard from Bernard Gogarty (Smyth & Son), who is also chair of a panel that adjudicates payment disputes under the Construction Contracts Act 2013.

‘Arbitration on speed’

Gogarty said that he feared that some solicitors were looking at the process as a specialist area, for construction lawyers only, describing this as “dangerous and unfortunate” for the profession.

Warning solicitors about the importance of responding quickly to correspondence under the process, Gogarty said that the profession should be aware that adjudication had been described as “arbitration on speed”.

He pointed out that most adjudications were dealt with within 42 days. “It’s not good enough for members of the profession not to be aware of this,” he said.

SCARP potential

Eversheds Sutherland lawyer Graham Kenny also spoke to the conference on the Small Company Administrative Rescue Process (SCARP), which was introduced in 2021 to provide a more cost-effective restructuring process for smaller companies.

Cumbersome

He said that only 68 companies had so far gone through the process, describing this figure as “dismal”. Kenny argued that this was partly because SCARP was a “cumbersome” process.

He added that, despite its complexity, it was a process that all solicitors could implement and was a potential area of growth for anyone trying to expand a practice.

Kenny described SCARP as “an ultimately excellent process” that was losing out because of a lack of awareness.