First: check your licence and insurance
For residential building work, you only have a legal right to a progress payment if you hold the licence the work needs and, where it applies, home warranty insurance (HBCF). No licence, no right to payment under the Act — none of the powers below are available to you, however clearly you’re owed the money.
Check your licence in a minute at verify.licence.nsw.gov.au. Do it before you rely on any of this.
Your three powers
If they don’t reply, they owe the full amount
Send a valid payment claim and they have 10 business days to reply in writing with a payment schedule (fewer if the contract says so). If they don’t reply, they owe everything you claimed. In court they can’t counter-claim or use any excuse under the contract — not defects, not back-charges, not “it wasn’t worth that”.
It costs nothing. It just needs your claim to say it’s made under the Security of Payment Act.
You can stop work, legally
Give written notice that you intend to stop work, saying it’s made under the Act. 2 business days later you can stop, and you’re not liable for any loss that causes them. If they give the rest of the job to someone else while you’re stopped, you can claim that loss too. Once you’re paid, you go back within 3 business days.
Walking off without the notice is a breach of contract. With it, it’s your legal right. One letter makes the difference.
You can freeze the money above your builder
Once you’ve applied for adjudication, you can send a payment withholding request to whoever is paying your builder (the principal contractor). They must hold back enough to cover your claim. If they pay your builder anyway, they become personally liable to you for the debt.
Hardly anyone uses it, because hardly anyone knows it exists.
“I can’t pay you until the owner pays me” means nothing
In NSW, “pay when paid” and “pay if paid” clauses are void. Whether your builder has been paid has no bearing on what they owe you. It isn’t a defence, it isn’t a valid reason in a payment schedule, and it doesn’t stop any deadline.
The dates that matter
Payment is due 20 business days after you send your claim. Your contract can make that shorter, but not longer. A term allowing later payment has no effect, and you can’t be made to sign away your rights under the Act.
One exception, which covers a lot of house work. If the work is on a home the owner lives in or will live in, the 20-day rule doesn’t apply. Payment is due when the contract says, or 10 business days after the claim if the contract doesn’t say. Everything else on this page still applies: the claim, the reply, the 10-day window and adjudication.
Business days aren’t calendar days. Weekends, public holidays and 27–31 December don’t count. A claim sent in mid-December runs well into January — just when people assume they’ve run out of time and give up.
Who sends and who replies
Who can send a payment claim? Anyone owed a progress payment for building work, materials, plant hire or related services — builders, trades, suppliers, labour hire, designers and building advisers.
Who replies? Whoever receives one. Owners, owners corporations and owner-builders only ever reply. Builders and trades do both.
Work out your payment deadlines
A payment claim starts several deadlines the moment it’s received: when the other side must reply, when payment is due, and how long there is to apply for adjudication. Miss one and you can lose the right altogether.
Weekends, NSW public holidays and 27–31 December don’t count, and your contract can shorten some periods — so the real date is rarely the one you’d guess. If your contract sets its own period, it’s counted the way the contract defines a day (calendar, working or business days), which can make a week’s difference.
Our free calculator asks a few questions, then shows every deadline, the section of the Act it comes from, and what happens if you miss it.
The calculator asks questions because the website doesn’t know your contract. eSiteOffice will: you enter the contract once, and every deadline is worked out from it. Opens October.