Evolution of Statutory Adjudication as a Form of Dispute Resolution in the U.K. Construction Industry

This paper reports on the rapid growth in the use of this form of dispute resolution and its apparent decline. It considers how this novel form of dispute resolution has changed in nature from its original limited role of providing a speedy and inexpensive process of resolving disputes so that cash could flow in the industry and be of help primarily to those in the lower reaches of the subcontracting chain into a highly developed legal process which has increasingly been utilized for large and contractually complex disputes. Statutory adjudication is still used extensively in the U.K. construction industry as the method of choice to resolve disputes, many of which would previously have gone to court or to arbitration. Data for this study were provided by the Adjudication Reporting Center at Glasgow Caledonian University.