Natural justice challenges rarely replace adjudication discipline.
Adjudication is deliberately fast. That speed is not incidental to the process; it is the commercial purpose of the process. The courts therefore give adjudicators a considerable degree of procedural latitude and will usually enforce adjudicators’ decisions unless there is a clear jurisdictional defect or a material breach of natural justice.
The dispute in Project One London Ltd v VMA Services Ltd arose from payment, valuation and adjudication enforcement issues. In the later enforcement proceedings, the resisting party advanced natural justice arguments in an attempt to avoid enforcement of the adjudicator’s decision. The court rejected those arguments and enforced the decision. That made the case commercially important because it confirmed that enforcement resistance is not a second opportunity to reargue the adjudication, and that natural justice challenges will only assist where there is a material procedural unfairness or jurisdictional defect.
For contractors, the practical message is important. A party that disagrees with an adjudicator’s assessment, reasoning or outcome will not necessarily have a basis to resist enforcement. The court is not concerned with whether the adjudicator reached the best answer. The enforcement question is narrower: did the adjudicator have jurisdiction, and was the procedure materially fair?
Why the case matters
The decision matters because parties often underestimate how difficult it is to resist enforcement. The Technology and Construction Court’s approach to adjudication enforcement remains robust. An adjudicator may make evaluative judgments, prefer one party’s evidence, reject parts of a valuation, take a practical approach to disputed material and reach conclusions that one party considers wrong. That does not, without more, make the decision unenforceable. Natural justice challenges are not intended to convert enforcement proceedings into an appeal. A party cannot usually resist enforcement by saying, in different language, that the adjudicator misunderstood the evidence, gave insufficient weight to a submission, adopted the wrong analysis or reached an unfair commercial result. Those may be criticisms of the decision, but they are not necessarily defects in the enforceability of the decision.
That distinction is commercially important. Adjudication is designed to produce a temporarily binding answer quickly. The courts protect that system by enforcing decisions even where the reasoning may be imperfect. Unless the challenge goes to jurisdiction or a material procedural unfairness, the losing party will usually be required to comply and argue about final rights later, if it has the appetite and legal route to do so.
Enforcement risk is shaped during the adjudication
For Legalbuild clients, the main point is that enforcement risk is shaped during the adjudication itself. The referral, response, reply, evidence, valuation material, programme position and legal submissions must be prepared on the assumption that the adjudicator’s decision will probably be enforced. That requires discipline before the adjudication begins. The party advancing or resisting a claim needs to know the contract mechanism, the payment chronology, the notice position, the valuation basis, the scope of the dispute and the evidence supporting its case. Where delay is involved, the programme position and causation analysis need to be coherent. Where defects are alleged, the record must distinguish between workmanship, design, specification, product, instruction and later damage. Where payment is in issue, the application, payment notice and pay less notice chronology must be clear.
A party that enters adjudication with fragmented evidence is already exposed. The compressed timetable leaves little room to reconstruct a project history that should have been organised during delivery. By the time enforcement is reached, the opportunity to shape the evidential record has usually passed.
Why natural justice is a narrow route
Natural justice remains important, but it is a narrow route. It protects the fairness of the adjudication process. It is not a general mechanism for correcting a decision that one party considers wrong. A genuine natural justice issue may arise where, for example, the adjudicator decides the dispute on a basis that the parties were not given a fair opportunity to address, refuses to consider a material defence, acts in a materially unfair way, or exceeds the jurisdiction conferred by the notice of adjudication and the dispute referred. But the threshold is not met merely because the adjudicator reached a difficult, compressed or commercially unwelcome conclusion.
Contractors should therefore be careful not to treat natural justice as a fallback strategy. It is not a substitute for a proper response, a properly evidenced valuation, a coherent contractual analysis or a clear jurisdictional position advanced at the right time. If a party sees a genuine procedural issue during the adjudication, it should be raised clearly and promptly. Waiting until enforcement to recast dissatisfaction as unfairness is a weak strategy.
The practical message for contractors
Contractors should approach adjudication on the assumption that the decision will be enforced. That assumption changes the way the case should be prepared. It means the party should not rely on enforcement proceedings as a safety net. The adjudication should be treated as the critical battleground. The contract documents, notices, payment chronology, valuation evidence, delay records, correspondence and project records should already be structured before referral wherever possible. The case should be presented in a way that allows the adjudicator to understand the contractual route, the factual narrative, the entitlement position and the evidence without having to search for the logic across disorganised material.
For responding parties, the same discipline applies. A response should not simply deny the claim. It should identify the contractual answer, the evidential answer and any jurisdictional or procedural points clearly. If the referring party has framed the dispute too widely, too narrowly or incorrectly, that issue needs to be addressed in the adjudication, not kept in reserve for enforcement.
This is particularly important for contractors operating under pressure on live projects. Adjudication often arrives when cashflow is strained, relationships have deteriorated and the project team is still trying to deliver the works. That is exactly when discipline matters most. A rushed, reactive adjudication response can create an enforcement problem that cannot easily be undone.
Legalbuild’s view
For Legalbuild, Project One v VMA supports a core adjudication principle: the legal and evidential case must be built before it is needed. Adjudication rewards parties who arrive with organised documents, a clear contractual analysis and a controlled narrative. It exposes parties who try to reconstruct the case after the commercial position has already deteriorated.
The real protection is not an enforcement challenge. The real protection is preparation. Notices, payment records, valuation support, programme analysis, correspondence and evidence should be maintained during the project in a way that allows the party to move quickly if adjudication becomes necessary. Natural justice arguments have their place, but they are exceptional. They should not be treated as a rescue strategy for a weak adjudication record. Contractors should assume that an adjudicator’s decision will be enforced and prepare the adjudication accordingly. That is the commercial lesson. If the dispute is going to be decided quickly, the evidence must already be ready. If the decision is likely to be enforced, the strategy must be right from the start.
Case reference: Project One London Ltd v VMA Services Ltd [2025] EWHC 3304 (TCC).
