Herbert Smith LLP, London

The past two years have seen the Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) unusually active in the production of new standard building contract forms, the UK Government reasonably active in its attempts to update the Construction Act (however modestly), and the courts throughout the UK extremely active in the construction field. Space however precludes us dealing with all the cases in this issue and so some will be covered in the next issue. In several cases the English courts have followed their historic approach of trying, wherever possible, to give effect to express contractual terms, even where this may seem to produce a harsh result for one of the parties. We have also seen the first judicial analysis of net contribution clauses, and we discuss this in some detail below.

The JCT publishes a suite of standard form building contracts which are widely used in the UK construction industry, principally on building projects. This year the JCT has commenced releasing revised versions of its 2005 suite of contracts. At the time of writing (mid-July 2009) revised versions have already been released of the Standard Building Contract, the Design and Build Contract, the Intermediate Building Contract and the Minor Works Building Contract, together with their associated forms of subcontract and collateral warranty. It is anticipated that revised versions of the Constructing Excellence Contract and the Major Projects Construction Contract will be released in late July 2009, and that the Measured Term Contract, the Prime Cost Building Contract and the Repair and Maintenance Contract will be available from August 2009.