Every building claim carries an invisible expiry date, and defects, inconveniently, love to surface late. The crack appears in year five; the flat roof fails in year eight; the misconnected drain announces itself in year eleven. Whether you can still do anything about it depends on which limitation clock governs, and when it started ticking. This is the map.
The clocks
Contract, 6 years (Limitation Act 1980) from the breach: normally when the defective work was done, at latest around practical completion. Not from when you noticed. A defect surfacing in year seven is out of time in contract even though you couldn’t have known, the harshness the other clocks below exist to soften.
Deeds, 12 years. Contracts executed as a deed get double. Almost no domestic building contract is a deed (JCT homeowner forms are signed “underhand”), but architect appointments and some warranties can be, check the signature block for “executed as a deed”.
Negligence, 6 years from damage, plus the Latent Damage Act. Claims in negligence run six years from when damage occurs (not when work was done), and where damage stays hidden, the Latent Damage Act 1986 adds 3 years from the date you knew, or reasonably could have known, the material facts. All of it capped by a 15-year longstop from the negligent act. Negligence has its own doctrinal limits in defects cases, the contract vs negligence guide covers when it’s actually available.
Defective Premises Act, 15 / 30 years. For work connected with providing a dwelling that leaves it unfit for habitation: 15 years (work completed after 28 June 2022), 30 years retrospectively for earlier work, the Building Safety Act’s dramatic 2022 extension.
The odd ones: fraud or deliberate concealment postpones the start until discovery (the builder who knowingly buried a defect can’t hide behind the clock they ran out); claims under guarantees and insurance-backed warranties follow the policy’s own terms.
The quick table
| Route | Clock | Starts | Longstop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract | 6 yrs | Breach (work done) | - |
| Deed | 12 yrs | Breach | - |
| Negligence | 6 yrs | Damage occurs | - |
| Latent Damage Act | 3 yrs | Knowledge | 15 yrs from act |
| DPA 1972 | 15 yrs | Completion | 30 yrs (pre-2022 work) |
What this means in practice
Within six years of the work: straightforward, contract (or the Consumer Rights Act) is your route; proceed via the normal escalation.
Years six to fifteen: contract is gone; the question becomes negligence-with-latent-damage (three years from discovery, so the clock is running from the moment you find the defect) or, for habitability-level defects, the DPA. This is the zone where early advice pays: the discovery date needs evidencing (get the expert report promptly, it both proves the defect and dates your knowledge), and delay can itself expire the claim.
Beyond fifteen years: the DPA’s 30-year retrospective window for pre-2022 work is realistically the only door, for defects serious enough to clear its bar, against whichever firms in the chain still exist.
Issued just in time counts: limitation stops when proceedings are issued, not resolved. Where a deadline looms mid-negotiation, a protective claim (or a written standstill agreement pausing the clock) preserves the position, a solicitor’s move, cheaply made and routinely decisive.
Date the problem the day you find it, in writing with photographs; the site records you kept during the build tell the other half of the story, when the work was done. Between those two dates lives every argument this guide describes.
This guide is general information for homeowners in England and Wales, not legal advice.
