What is a Relevant Matter under JCT?
One of the listed matters in a JCT contract, all on the employer's side, that entitles the contractor to recover loss and expense caused by it. It concerns money; a Relevant Event concerns time.
Updated: 15 September 2026. By Jack Butler-Kettle, Quantity Surveyor & Claims Consultant.
The answer
A Relevant Matter is the JCT term for an event or default on the employer's side, listed in the contract, that causes the contractor to incur direct loss and expense it would not otherwise have incurred, and which therefore founds a claim for that money. The list in the 2016 forms covers matters such as variations and instructions, deferred possession, discrepancies in the contract documents, and impediments or defaults by the employer or those it is responsible for; the exact list is in the contract in front of you and should be quoted from it, not from memory. A Relevant Event is the parallel list that founds an extension of time. The two overlap heavily but are separate, and the claims are separate: loss and expense is claimed under the loss and expense clause with its own notice and particulars requirements, whatever has happened to time. On this site the money is what we calculate; the time side of a claim comes from the contract administrator or someone else.
Example
The situation
An employer instructs a change to the ground floor layout, notified in writing as a variation, and the change leaves the contractor's plastering gang unable to proceed for two weeks.
What happens
- The instruction is a Relevant Matter, and notice is given as the loss and expense clause requires.
- The loss and expense claim prices the gang's standing time and the associated preliminaries for the two weeks from the labour returns and the plant hire records.
- Any extension of time for the same fortnight is applied for separately, under a separate clause.
The outcome
The money for the fortnight travels as loss and expense under the Relevant Matter; the time for the same fortnight is a separate application under a separate clause.
Claim Preparation and Assembly builds the loss and expense figure head by head from the records.