Clerkenwell Lifestyle v HG Construction

• Whether a February 2023 email exchange created a separate binding agreement revising the completion dates.
• Whether that alleged agreement stood independently from the contractual extension of time machinery.
• Whether the adjudicator had used the wrong starting point when calculating liquidated damages.
• Whether HG could resist enforcement by saying the adjudicator had failed to deal with the separate binding agreement point.

Clerkenwell sought to enforce the adjudication award. The saved article states that the adjudicator had awarded Clerkenwell just under £956,000 in liquidated damages.

Clerkenwell's position was that the award should be enforced and that HG's attempt to recast the February 2023 email exchange as a separate binding agreement did not provide a valid answer.

HG's case was that the February 2023 email exchange itself constituted a binding agreement revising the completion dates, independent of the contractual extension of time mechanism.

On that footing, HG argued that later extensions should have been added to those revised dates rather than to the original contractual completion dates.

The saved digest and findings file record the result at a high level only. On that material, the court rejected HG's separate binding agreement argument and enforced the adjudicator's decision.

The preserved commentary frames the point as a warning that everyday language in extension of time correspondence will not easily be elevated into a freestanding contract displacing the machinery in the building contract.

The TCC enforced the adjudication award and rejected HG's attempt to recast the extension of time correspondence as a freestanding binding agreement.

The practical result was that Clerkenwell kept the liquidated damages award and HG failed to show that the email exchange had replaced the contractual route for revising completion dates.

• Extension of time correspondence will not readily be treated as a separate contract where the reported issue is whether the parties were still operating the agreed contract machinery.
• A party seeking to resist enforcement on a side-deal theory still has to show that the correspondence really displaced the existing contractual mechanism.
• The source pack supports a contract-administration lesson rather than a wider doctrinal statement, because it preserves only a secondary commentary summary.
• Where the saved material is thin, the safer course is to keep the article at the level of the reported issue, the reported result and the practical point that follows from them.

• Clerkenwell Lifestyle (UK) Ltd was the claimant and HG Construction Ltd was the defendant.
• Clerkenwell's position was that the adjudication award for just under £956,000 in liquidated damages should be enforced and that the February 2023 emails did not create a separate contract changing the completion dates.
• HG's position was that the February 2023 emails had already revised the completion dates by agreement, so the adjudicator had used the wrong starting point.
• The central issue was whether the extension of time emails operated only within the contract machinery or created a separate binding agreement.
• On the preserved secondary commentary, the court rejected the separate agreement argument and enforced the adjudicator's decision.
• Clerkenwell won. The TCC enforced the adjudication award and rejected HG's defence.