I've had no Payment Notice, no Pay Less Notice, just silence
They never sent the notices, and that silence is worth money.
What's happening?
Payers miss notices constantly. Commercial teams change, jobs get busy, and the discipline of serving a valid notice against every application slips. Most payees shrug and chase the certificate instead, because nobody has told them what that missed notice actually did.
What it did is this: the Construction Act says that where a valid application is met with no valid Payment Notice and no valid Pay Less Notice in time, the applied sum can become the Notified Sum, payable in full, whatever the payer thinks the work was worth. Adjudicators decide these disputes on the documents: the contract's dates, what was served, and when. Few mechanisms in construction law are that mechanical, which is why the paperwork matters more than the argument.
It also is not limited to this month. If notices have been slipping for a while, earlier cycles may hold the same entitlement, and depending on the contract and how the account has moved on, some of it may still be live.
The solution
One route for the cycle in front of you, one for the cycles behind you.