It is commonplace for an arbitration agreement to provide that a specified step thereunder must be commenced within a prescribed period of time and with failure to comply operating as a bar to the subsequent prosecution of any claim within the ambit of the arbitration agreement. Such an arbitration agreement, which for the sake of brevity may be referred to as a “time and bar” arbitration clause, has long been a familiar clause in standard forms, such as charter-parties, commodity and produce contracts. The Centrocon arbitration clause is not only a typical illustration of this class of arbitration agreement but is also something of a clause célèbre. It provides: “All disputes from time to time arising out of this contract shall, unless the parties agree forthwith to a single arbitrator, be referred to the final arbitrament of two Arbitrators carrying on business in London who shall be members of the Baltic and engaged in the Shipping and/or Grain Trades, one to be appointed by each of the parties with power to appoint an umpire. Any claim must be made in writing and Claimant’s Arbitrator appointed within twelve months of final discharge and where this provision is not complied with, the claim shall be deemed to be waived and absolutely barred”.1

Such “time and bar” arbitration agreements operate independently of statutory time limits, which limits apply to arbitrations to the same extent as they do actions at law.2 In effect, by substituting an alternative period of time to that specified by statute, such agreements operate as a contractual displacement of the otherwise operative statutory time limits. In this regard it is however only open to the parties to shorten the period of time; they cannot by contract extend time beyond the stipulated statutory period, unless the statute itself makes provision for such an extension.3

Although a “time and bar” arbitration clause is now a familiarity there obviously exists no universal practice as to the precise period of time within which the arbitration must be commenced. This is a matter of agreement to be determined in the context of the circumstances of the parties and the nature of the trade; as also are the precise circumstances from which time is to begin to run, and the acts which are to be considered as commencing the arbitration proceedings.4 At the extremes the time