What is an Interim Valuation Date? The JCT 2016 date that every payment deadline hangs on, and why it can fall earlier than the calendar says

Published 27 September 2026 · VariationFlow

A plain-English guide to the Interim Valuation Date under the JCT 2016 and 2024 forms for UK subcontractors: what it is, where it is fixed, how the due date, payment notice, final date and pay less notice all count from it, why the sub-contract’s period is not the main contract’s, the “nearest, not next, Business Day” rule that can pull a cycle forward, and why the cycle continues after practical completion.

The sub-contract says the Interim Valuation Date is the 25th of each month. In one month the 25th is a Sunday. The contractor treats the valuation date as the following Monday and your application goes in on the Friday before, four days ahead of a date you have written in the diary. The contract particulars say something different: the nearest Business Day, not the next one, and the nearest Business Day to a Sunday is the Friday. Your application was late for that cycle by the contract’s own words, and the payer’s silence that month produced no notified sum.

The Interim Valuation Date is the single date every JCT payment deadline is counted from, and it is fixed in a way most people never read.

What it is

The Interim Valuation Date is the JCT 2016 suite’s anchor for interim payment. It replaced the older arrangement in which the contractor’s application and the architect’s certificate ran on their own timetables, and it was introduced so that the main contract, the sub-contract and the sub-subcontract could all value on the same day and pay in sequence. JCT said so when the 2016 editions were published: the Interim Valuation Date operates at main contract, sub-contract and sub-subcontract level. Everything below it in the chain is counted from it.

It is fixed in the Contract Particulars. The first one is a date the parties write in; the subsequent ones fall on the same date in each month afterwards, or the nearest Business Day in that month. The Design and Build 2016 Conditions carry the definition and the Contract Particulars carry the words, and the 2024 editions preserve the same numbering.

What counts from it

On the JCT Design and Build main contract, read from a licensed copy of the 2016 Conditions, the periods run like this: the due date for each interim payment is seven days after the Interim Valuation Date; the Employer’s Payment Notice is due not later than five days after the due date; the final date for payment is fourteen days from the due date; and a Pay Less Notice is due not later than five days before the final date. Move the Interim Valuation Date by a day and all four move with it.

The sub-contract counts from the same date and not by the same numbers. The JCT sub-contract forms set their own due date as a longer period after the Interim Valuation Date, so that the contractor can be paid before it has to pay you, and the reported cases quote different figures for different sub-contract forms: twelve days for one and twenty-one for another. This guide does not state the period for your form, because the sub-contract editions have not been read here on a licensed footing, and neither should you rely on a figure quoted for a different one. Read the due-date clause in your own sub-contract, in the interim payments part of its payment section.

The nearest Business Day

A Business Day under the JCT forms is a day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday, and the Contract Particulars move an Interim Valuation Date that falls on a non-Business Day to the nearest one in that month, not the next one. So a valuation date that falls on a Sunday goes back to the Friday, and one on a Saturday goes back to the Friday too. The cycle then starts two days earlier than a calendar with the 25th circled on it would suggest, and an application timed against the calendar is late against the contract. Nobody chooses this; it falls out of the word nearest, and it is worth reading the particulars of every job for the word actually used.

Do not let the Business Day definition leak into the rest of the cycle. The seven, five, fourteen and five above are counted in days, and the JCT reckoning clause and section 116 of the Construction Act leave out public holidays from that count and nothing else. A final date can be a Saturday. Only the valuation date itself moves.

The cycle does not stop at practical completion

Under the 2011 editions the interim cycle doubled to two months after practical completion. The 2016 editions made it continue monthly, so a subcontractor whose retention and final adjustments are still being certified after completion keeps a monthly due date and a monthly set of notices. That matters for the notified sum: every cycle after completion is a cycle in which a payer’s silence, against a proper application, fixes the sum due.

The habit

• Write the twelve Interim Valuation Dates for the year on the first day of the job, from the particulars, with the nearest-Business-Day adjustment already made, and put the application date in front of each.
• Count the due date from it under your own sub-contract’s period, not the main contract’s, and count the notice dates from the due date.
• When the contractor’s programme moves, the Interim Valuation Date does not. It is a calendar, not a milestone.

How VariationFlow keeps the calendar

The payment timeline projects every cycle’s due date, payer’s notice date, pay less deadline and final date from the valuation date and the periods in the contract profile, reckoned under section 116 for the region the site is in, and the Enterprise plan’s payment calendar lets the actual agreed dates for each cycle be entered where a job runs on a schedule the projection cannot express. The notified-sum tracker on each cycle then works from the dates that were actually agreed.

This guide is general information rather than legal advice. Your sub-contract’s own words fix the valuation dates and the periods, and it is worth reading both with an adviser before relying on a diary built from the main contract.