Premier Modular Limited v Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust [2026] EWHC 1404 (TCC)

Premier Modular sought to enforce a corrected adjudication decision awarding 1,655,385.49 pounds and other relief. The NHS Trust resisted on the ground that the adjudicator's central findings were reached in breach of natural justice, advancing three grounds.

The judge accepted the challenge. The difficulty was not that the adjudicator had overlooked a point under time pressure, which would usually favour enforcement, but that he had constructed a case for Premier Modular which Premier Modular had not itself made, and had done so without giving the Trust a proper opportunity to respond. That crossed into unfairness even by the compressed standards of adjudication, and the decision could not be enforced.

The case marks the boundary between the strong approach courts take to enforcing adjudication decisions and the narrow natural-justice exception. An adjudicator may make errors of fact or law within jurisdiction and still be enforced, but may not decide the dispute on a basis of the adjudicator's own devising that neither party advanced and neither had the chance to address.

At paragraph 50 the judge found that the adjudicator "sought to create a case for PML which PML had not made and with which the Trust had no proper opportunity to deal, even by the hectic standards of adjudication".