Home Group Limited (“Home Group”) sought summary enforcement of the adjudication decision (“the Decision”) dated 28 April 2023. In the Decision, MPS Housing Limited (“MPS”) was ordered to pay Home Group £6,565,831.94 plus interest and 85% of the adjudicator’s fee.

Home Group issued its Notice of Adjudication on 13 March 2023. The adjudicator was nominated by RICS on 15 March 2023. MPS raised three jurisdictional challenges on 15 March 2023: (i) no dispute had crystalised, (ii) the case referred to was too large and/or complicated to be suitable for adjudication, and (iii) two different disputes had been referred. 

Home Group served its Referral on 17 March 2023 which included a quantum expert report running to 155 pages (with 76 appendices comprising 202 files, amounting to 338 MB of data) and five factual witness statements (with hundreds of exhibited pages). 

By letter on 20 March 2023, MPS invited the adjudicator to reconsider his decision on jurisdiction on the grounds of complexity. MPS requested that the adjudicator either resign or give MPS sufficient time to consider and analyse the Referral and prepare its Response. 

There were various exchanges between the adjudicator and the parties. The adjudicator proposed 5 April 2023 for the Response, or 11 April 2023 which was part of an extended timetable offered by Home Group.

On 23 March 2023 MPS confirmed that it was not prepared to agree the proposed timetable and maintained its three jurisdictional challenges. The adjudicator confirmed the following day that the date for Response was 5 April 2023. MPS served its Response on 5 April 2023.

The adjudicator issued its Decision in favour of Home Group in the sum of £6,565,831.94, concluding that he “kept [his] jurisdiction under review throughout” and “…had sufficient time to appreciate the dispute and, at least, do broad justice between the Parties…”. MPS claims that it had not had sufficient time to digest the Referral and that this was a breach of natural justice, thus rendering the Decision unenforceable. 

In this enforcement case Mr Justice Constable referred to the judgments in HS Works Limited v Enterprise Managed Services Limited and Amec Group Limited v Thames Water Utilities Limited in respect of submissions on jurisdiction which focused on the complexity of the dispute. A key point arising from these cases was that the mere fact than an adjudication contained a large or complex dispute does not itself make it unsuitable for adjudication. Looking at this adjudication, the Judge commented that the adjudicator had correctly kept under review the question of his ability to do broad justice between the parties, notwithstanding the substantial quantity of material he had been presented with. 

Mr Justice Constable also referred to authorities which demonstrated that arguments based upon time constraints impacting the ability to respond fairly had enjoyed little success. Mr Constable noted that despite the present case having a significant number of low value items requiring determination, it was in reality “a vanilla ‘final account’”.

Mr Constable also found that spot checks and sampling (which although MPS did not argue was itself inherently unfair, it was relevant to the assessment of whether the time provided to them was a breach of natural justice) were an entirely permissible way for an adjudicator to proceed. 

Mr Justice Constable concluded that the relevant legal position can be distilled as follows: (i) adjudication decisions must be enforced even if they contain errors of procedure, fact or law, (ii) an adjudication decision will not be enforced if it is reached in breach of natural justice and the breach is material, (iii) both complexity and constraint of time to respond are inherent of the process of adjudication, and are no bar in themselves to adjudication enforcement, (iv) in cases involving significant amounts of data, an adjudicator is entitled to proceed by way of spot checks and/or sampling.

This case is representative of the court’s well-established approach to upholding adjudicator’s decisions and serves as a reminder that complexity and time constraints are simply a feature of the adjudication process.