Cash retentions are not just an issue that needs addressing – they are a symptom of a fundamental problem in our industry: a lack of trust and performance. 

From a client’s position, retentions seem to make good business sense. You pay someone to build you a project to a quality and a specification. In case they don’t deliver it properly, you hold back some of their payment at the end of the contract to provide leverage in ensuring they return to put things right if the need arises. 

Without retentions, a client with a long snagging list on a completed project would be faced with a contractor without any real financial incentive to fix the problems. 

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