Beam’s Adjudication Notice claimed money and time and that the Council were in repudiatory breach of contract. An Adjudicator was appointed and the Referral Notice served. The Council promptly made it clear it considered that more than one dispute had been referred to adjudication but the Adjudicator emphatically and very promptly made it clear that he did not consider the point a good one. The Council reserved its position.

The Judge held that only a single dispute had been referred to adjudication: this dispute was what was due and owing to Beam. It was important to bear in mind that construction contracts are commercial contracts and parties can be taken to have agreed a sensible interpretation will be given to what the meaning of a dispute is.

The Judge drew the following conclusions at para 38:

(i) A dispute arises generally when and in circumstances in which a claim or assertion is made by one party and expressly or implicitly challenged or not accepted.
(ii) A dispute in existence at one time can in time metamorphose in to something different to that which it was originally.
(iii) A dispute can comprise a single issue or any number of issues within it. However, a dispute between parties does not necessarily comprise everything which is in issue between them at the time that one party initiates adjudication; put another way, everything in issue at that time does not necessarily comprise one dispute, although it may do so.
(iv) What a dispute in any given case is will be a question of fact albeit that the facts may require to be interpreted. Courts should not adopt an over legalistic analysis of what the dispute between the parties is, bearing in mind that almost every construction contract is a commercial transaction and parties can not broadly have contemplated that every issue between the parties would necessarily have to attract a separate reference to adjudication.
(v) The Notice of Adjudication and the Referral Notice are not necessarily determinative of what the true dispute is or as to whether there is more than one dispute. One looks at them but also at the background facts.
(vi) Where on a proper analysis, there are two separate and distinct disputes, only one can be referred to one adjudicator unless the parties agree otherwise. An adjudicator who has two disputes referred to him or her does not have jurisdiction to deal with the two disputes.
(vii) Whether there are one or more disputes again involves a consideration of the facts. It may well be that, if there is a clear link between two or more arguably separate claims or assertions, that may well point to there being one dispute. A useful if not invariable rule of thumb is that, if disputed claim No 1 can not be decided without deciding all or parts of disputed claim No 2, that establishes such a clear link and points to there being only one dispute.”