Constructing for the future: Can the duty of good faith improve payment in the UK construction industry?

Adversarialism within the UK construction industry fosters poor payment practices. Thus, stakeholders down the supply chain consistently suffer cashflow issues which can cause insolvencies. This study consisted of a critical review of literature and found that while the UK government proffered solutions to combat poor payment practices, these have had minimal impact. Hence, poor payment practices persist. It also found that lack of adequate progress in battling payment problems suggest further research is needed to determine sufficient solutions. Furthermore, it explored if creation of a (statutory) duty of good faith (via legislation) applied to construction contracts could lead to a reduction in adversarialism, thereby causing improved payment practices. This led to recommendations of empirical investigations including whether legislation has an influence on good faith towards reducing poor payment practices by wholly tackling adversarialism through implementing statutory-backed good faith legislation. This research addresses the gap in knowledge of the possible and plausible impact good faith could have on adversarialism and by extension adversarial payment practices within the UK construction industry.