Putting a Written Contract Behind a Domestic Job

Monday is booked and the only record is a thumbs-up

The quotation arrived as an attachment on the Thursday. You read it twice, replied that it looked good and could he still make the second week of the month, and he replied that he could, that it would be two weeks on site, that the old units would come out whole rather than be broken up, that the skip would stand on the drive and not the road, and that he would need the side gate left open. Somewhere inside those three messages a contract came into existence. Neither of you could now write down what is in it in the same words, and neither of you will read the thread again until something has gone wrong.

Being clear about that changes what the exercise is for. In England and Wales a contract to build is valid without any writing at all, so the question is not whether you have one but whether either of you could prove a particular term — and the party who cannot prove a term is the party it was there to protect. Section 50 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 reaches further than most people realise: information the trader gives you about the service, which you take into account in deciding to go ahead, is already a term. The promise about the two weeks and the units lifted out rather than smashed is binding today. It is simply undated, unwitnessed and held in one person's memory.

Some jurisdictions refuse to leave this to the parties. California's home improvement provisions in the Business and Professions Code, at section 7159, require the contract to be in writing and signed, a copy given to the owner before work begins, and prescribe its contents — the contracting entity and its licence number, a description of the project, the price, approximate start and completion dates, the payment schedule and a set of notices. New South Wales does something comparable under the Home Building Act 1989 above a contract value threshold. England and Wales impose no equivalent on a general builder, which is why what follows is a list of decisions rather than a form.

It is a pack, not a page

Almost nobody signs a contract for domestic building work. What they sign is one document out of six that all form part of it, which is why the argument in month three is so often about which of the six was right. The pack is the agreement — a standard form or a covering page you have written; the accepted quotation with its assumptions and exclusions; the drawings, by sheet number and revision letter; any specification or scope schedule; the payment schedule; and a list of what you are supplying or doing yourself. Naming those six on the front page takes ten minutes and is most of the work.

The list needs an order, because two of those documents will eventually disagree. Standard forms carry a precedence clause and a home-made agreement has to borrow the idea: the agreement governs the quotation, the quotation governs the drawings, and the drawings govern anything said in an email. Which order you choose matters far less than choosing one. Two conventions come with it whatever you decide — figured dimensions beat scaled ones, so nobody builds to what a ruler said off a printed sheet, and every drawing enters the pack with its revision letter, because Rev C and Rev E of one sheet are two different buildings and both will be on site by June.

That is also where the promises made in your kitchen become ordinary written terms. The two weeks, the units lifted out whole, the skip on the drive rather than the road, the make and model of boiler rather than or similar: one line each on the scope schedule. Identity belongs on the same page, because a sole trader, a limited company and a trading name are three different things to sue; the disclosure duties that put the right one on a builder's paperwork are covered from his side on the quotation page. Your own check takes a minute — the entity on the front of the pack must be the entity on the invoices and on the insurance certificate.

1. Number the documents on the front page, one line each, with the date or revision letter identifying the version you mean.
2. Print or file that exact set. A drawing living only in a folder somebody else can update is not a contract document.
3. Write the order of precedence in one sentence, and say that figured dimensions govern over scaled ones.
4. Turn every spoken promise you are relying on into a line of the scope schedule, in the words you want read back to you.
5. List what you are supplying or doing yourself, with the date each has to be available to the builder.
6. Both parties initial every drawing, then each keep a complete copy — not a copy each of different halves.

Dates that can actually be breached

A start date and a completion date are not the same kind of promise, and a domestic contract often contains neither in a form that means anything. Starting on or around is not a date. Completion in about eight weeks is not a date. What you want is a stated day for possession of the site and a stated day for completion — and the first of those is your obligation, because you have to give him the house, or the part of it he needs, on the day you said. A client who is not ready is in breach as surely as a builder who is late, and it is the commonest first breach on domestic jobs.

The hours the work may happen in belong in the same clause, because they are the term most likely to be tested by a neighbour rather than by you. Local authorities in England and Wales control construction noise under sections 60 and 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, by a notice imposing hours and methods or by a prior consent the contractor applies for, so the hours you write need to sit inside what the authority would impose. Access, parking, use of the lavatory, where the skip stands and who holds keys are cheap to write and expensive to discover.

The clause nobody drafts is the one that does the real work: what happens when the completion date is missed. First, a route for extending time, listing the events that entitle the builder to more of it — and the honest list includes things you cause, because where a contract has no extension mechanism and the employer then delays the work, English law has for half a century treated the completion date as falling away, leaving only an obligation to finish within a reasonable time. That is the doctrine argued in Peak Construction (Liverpool) Ltd v McKinney Foundations Ltd, so a contract too harsh to accommodate your own delays ends up with no date in it. Second, what a missed date costs. A fixed weekly sum is enforceable in the United Kingdom only if it protects a legitimate interest and is not out of all proportion to it — the test set in Cavendish Square Holding BV v Talal El Makdessi and ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis — and the domestic forms mostly omit one, leaving you to prove actual loss. Where nothing is written, section 52 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 supplies a reasonable time and nothing more.

Nothing starts until these are on the table

Every piece of leverage you will ever have exists in the days before the first van arrives. After that the house is a building site, the alternative firms are unavailable, and a request that would have taken a phone call in March becomes a confrontation in May. So the last drafting move is to make the start date conditional: the works commence on the later of the stated date and the day the following documents have been provided, and here is the list.

Insurance is two certificates and a phone call: public liability in the exact name of the contracting entity, in date, with a limit you have read; an employers' liability certificate where anybody is employed; and your own household insurer told in writing that structural work is about to begin, because most buildings policies restrict cover during alteration. What the cover has to be, who insures the works and how a joint names policy behaves are covered on the insurance page. Registration is the other half — notifiable electrical work under Part P of the Building Regulations is self-certified through a competent person scheme or notified to building control, gas work is restricted by the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 to an approved class of persons, and replacement glazing runs through its own schemes. Ask which route the firm intends before Monday, because that answer decides whose fee it is.

The rest is consents and calculations, every item of which is somebody else's signature rather than the builder's. The building control application or the approved inspector's initial notice, with the plans-approval or building-notice route chosen deliberately. Planning permission, or written confirmation that the work is permitted development. The engineer's calculations for any opening, and who pays for the padstone schedule. Party wall notices served and any award in place — a separate exercise with its own timetable, covered on the party wall page, and the one item here that cannot be compressed. And where more than one contractor will be on site, the appointments described next, in writing.

Duties that do not stay with the builder because he is the builder

There is a comfortable belief that health and safety on a domestic job is entirely the builder's department. It is mostly true, and true because of a provision rather than because of common sense. Regulation 7 of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 passes a domestic client's duties to the contractor where there is one, and to the principal contractor where there is more than one; they may pass to the principal designer instead, but only under a written agreement. Regulation 5 requires both appointments to be in writing when more than one contractor is engaged. England has since acquired a parallel regime through Part 2A of the Building Regulations 2010, inserted by the Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023.

The reason this belongs in a contract rather than a leaflet is the case the belief does not cover. Engage one builder and the duties land on him with nobody writing anything. Engage a plasterer, an electrician, a plumber and a joiner yourself, sequence them from your own kitchen and decide whose week is whose, and you are a client with more than one contractor and no principal contractor appointed. Regulation 7 then settles it without asking you: the contractor in control of the construction phase becomes the principal contractor by default, and the designer in control of the earlier phase becomes the principal designer. The duties do not land on you — but they land on whoever happens to be in control rather than on whoever you would have chosen, and they land on a firm that does not know it is carrying them. The fix is one line in each agreement naming who holds the role.

Choosing the argument you would rather have

The last clause to write is the one both parties expect never to use, and the only one drafted while you still like each other; its worth is that a disagreement arriving in month three has somewhere to go other than two people getting entrenched in a half-finished room. Adjudication, the fast route the commercial world takes for granted, is not automatically available on a contract with a residential occupier — the reason is set out on the stage-payments page — and you get it only by agreeing to it. If you want it, name the body that will appoint the adjudicator, because a right to adjudicate with nobody nominated is a right to argue about who nominates. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors runs an appointment service for adjudicators, mediators and arbitrators, and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators does the same. Mediation costs less and settles more domestic disputes than any other step.

Two things sit outside your contract and are worth knowing before you need them. Under the Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015, a trader who exhausts an internal complaints procedure without resolving a complaint must tell the consumer of a certified ADR body and whether it intends to use it; many builders belong to a scheme through a trade body or the government-endorsed TrustMark framework, worth asking about before appointment rather than during a dispute. If it reaches court in England and Wales, the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols and, for larger matters, the Pre-Action Protocol for Construction and Engineering Disputes set out what has to happen first, and the small claims track under Part 26 of the Civil Procedure Rules normally takes claims up to ten thousand pounds without a solicitor. American contracts import the ladder wholesale: the AIA general conditions run claims through an initial decision maker and then mediation before binding resolution, with arbitration under the American Arbitration Association's construction industry rules as the alternative to court.

1. Name one person on each side entitled to raise and to settle a complaint, and require it in writing.
2. Give a response period in days, and say what happens when it passes without an answer.
3. Name mediation as the next step, and the body supplying the mediator if you cannot agree on one.
4. Say whether adjudication is agreed, and if so name the nominating body — a right with no nominator is not a route.
5. State the governing law and the courts, which matters the moment the builder is registered across a border.
6. Agree that work continues while a dispute runs, unless the dispute is about whether that work is safe.

Two signatures, one pack, one start date

The finishing act is smaller than the preparation. Both parties sign the agreement page, both date it, both initial every drawing in the numbered list, and each takes away a complete copy of the same pack. Where a jurisdiction requires the owner to be given a copy before work begins, that hand-over is when it happens rather than something posted later. If the builder is a company, whoever signs should be entitled to bind it, with the name printed under the signature so it is still legible in two years.

None of this makes a poor builder into a good one, and the document is no substitute for choosing well. What it does is make disagreement survivable, and it does most of that work for the builder rather than against him: a firm that knows what it has to build, by when, with which decisions arriving on which dates, and what happens the day something is found behind the plaster, can plan a job instead of guessing at one. The pack is mostly a record of what you both already believe. Its value is that in September, when your two memories of February have quietly drifted apart, there is a third account that has not moved.