The owners of the world’s second-largest movie set say an adjudicator’s decision to award £5.6m to Laing O’Rourke (LOR) is “demonstrably unfair”.
Shepperton Studios Limited (SSL) was taken to court on Tuesday by LOR in a bid to enforce the adjudicator’s ruling, made in its favour on 21 December, over the payment of a £5.6m invoice.
The case arises from a £331m design-and-build contract that the tier one firm entered into with SSL in November 2021.
The project involved the expansion of the studios, including the addition of sound stages, workshops, production offices, and other buildings and infrastructure.
However, the parties have been in dispute over a £5.6m invoice which LOR submitted to SSL on 24 July 2025.
Six days later, Gardiner & Theobald (G&T), SSL’s employer’s agent, issued a payment notice for the net sum of £2.4m.
On 19 August G&T issued a pay-less notice disputing the £2.4m invoice and claimed that SSL owed LOR nothing after it had deducted costs for damages, utilities and catering.
LOR argues SSL’s payment and pay-less notices are invalid because they do not set out the basis on which the sums have been calculated.
The contractor took the case to adjudication for payment of its £5.6m invoice and won.
Now, LOR has taken the case to the High Court to enforce payment.
In a hearing on Tuesday, Judge Simon Lofthouse KC said he will provide a written judgment on whether the adjudicator’s ruling will be upheld by the end of the week.
During the hearing SSL’s barrister, James Leabeater KC, accused LOR of “behaviour unbecoming of a tier one contractor”.
He added that LOR’s case had “no merit” and was “artificial and contrived”.
“This decision is demonstrably unfair. It would be unconscionable to enforce this adjudication decision,” he said.
“Their position on both the payment notice and pay-less notice is artificial and contrite. It is the very worst sort of smash and grab tactics and I respectfully say unbecoming of a tier one contractor.
“Their case is essentially we are entitled to a windfall payment of £5m which we know we are not entitled to. We are entitled to that windfall because a spreadsheet was not provided.”
Leabeater said the figures in the spreadsheet had already been provided to LOR on “numerous occasions before and in fact was attached to their [LOR’s] application for full payment”.
LOR’s barrister, Sanjay Patel KC, accused SSL of having two bites at the same cherry.
He said SSL’s original arguments from the adjudication are being “rebadged”.
“It is not a case of there been collective outrage over what an adjudicator has done,” he said.
“We are just here to enforce an adjudication decision. We have not been paid.”
The parties are due back in court in April, when SSL will argue its £2.4m payment and £2.4m pay-less notices are valid.
If SSL is successful, LOR’s claim for £5.6m would be wiped out.
In the April hearing, LOR will argue the notices are invalid because they do not set out the basis on which the sums have been calculated. It claims SSL’s monetary starting point is wrong.
Leabeater raised concerns that if the judge upheld the adjudicators decision and the money was paid to LOR ahead of the next hearing it might not repay it.
He said: “A member of the LOR group has behaved in what this court has recently described as a ‘commercially amoral’ way that gives rise to a reasonable grounds for fear that it would be gravely at the very least difficult and potentially impossible to recover that sum of money in the future.”
But Patel gave the court an undertaking on behalf of LOR that the contractor would return the money if it was required to do so.
SSL’s barrister said he was raising the concerns due to LOR’s subsidiary Laing O’Rourke Construction South entering into creditors’ voluntary liquidation in February last year ahead of a trial over serious defects at One Hyde Park (OHP), a luxury residential complex in Knightsbridge.
In a judgment handed down last month the High Court awarded the freeholder of OHP £35m in damages.
The judge in that case described LOR’s decision to walk away before the trial as “commercially amoral”.
