High Tech Construction Limited v WLP Trading and Marketing Limited [2026] EWHC 152 (TCC)

High Tech Construction applied for summary judgment to enforce an adjudicator's payment decision for works at a residential development. WLP contended that the underlying construction contract did not exist at all, raising the point squarely as a challenge to the adjudicator's jurisdiction.

Mr Justice Constable distinguished questions that go to the very existence of the contract from questions about its meaning. Because the claim was a payment claim under a contract whose existence was itself in issue, the existence question was existential and jurisdictional: the adjudicator could decide it for his own purposes but could not temporarily bind the parties to that conclusion. On the material, WLP's case that the foundational agreement had been fabricated or altered had a real prospect of success, so enforcement was refused.

The judgment illustrates the limit of the adjudicator's temporarily binding jurisdiction. An adjudicator can resolve disputes arising under a construction contract, but cannot conclusively establish that the contract giving the jurisdiction exists. Where the existence of the contract is genuinely in issue, that must be resolved by the court before a decision can be enforced.

At paragraph 71 the judge held that the adjudicator "did not have jurisdiction to temporarily bind the parties to his conclusion in this foundational question".