Quick answer
On commercial work the defects liability period for a kitchen package commonly runs 12 months from practical completion, with retentions tied to defects close-out. Most joinery callbacks are hinge and runner adjustments and edge lifts, not failures. The money question is defect versus wear versus damage, and dated handover photos plus a specced hardware cycle rating settle it.
Key points
- The DLP on commercial joinery commonly runs 12 months from practical completion; your contract sets the exact terms, and retentions wait on defects close-out.
- Joinery callbacks are dominated by hinge and runner adjustment and edge lifts: five-to-twenty-minute fixes when batched, margin-eaters when driven to one at a time.
- The three-way call that decides who pays is defect versus wear versus damage, and dated handover photos per address are what make it a lookup instead of an argument.
- Good subs batch visits, adjust everything while they are in the room, and close each item with a photo in a live register.
- Write the scope so arguments never start: hardware cycle ratings, stated exclusions, photographed handover condition, response tiers.
Ten months after practical completion, the facilities manager's email lands: forty-one kitchen defects across eighteen units, please rectify prior to DLP expiry. You open the spreadsheet with the usual dread. Thirty of the forty-one items are doors out of alignment. Four are drawers catching. Five are lifted edges near sinks, one is a cracked panel with a suspiciously trolley-shaped dent in it, and one just says 'cupboard broken'.
That email is the defects liability period working exactly as designed, and it is winnable or losable depending on paperwork written a year earlier. Here is how the DLP actually plays out on a kitchen package: what recurs, who pays for what, how a competent joinery sub runs the callbacks, and the scope wording that stops the end-of-DLP argument before it exists.
What the defects liability period means for the kitchen package
On commercial work the defects liability period commonly runs 12 months from practical completion. Defects notified inside the window must be remedied by the contractor, and retentions wait on close-out; the contract governs the exact period and mechanics, so read yours rather than assuming.
The joinery trap is arithmetic. A kitchen package might be a modest slice of the contract value, but it is hundreds of moving parts across every address: on an eighteen-unit job, somewhere near 250 doors and drawers, each one a potential line on a snag list. Small money, big line count, and the line count is what holds up retention release. Managing the DLP on joinery is therefore mostly about closing many tiny items efficiently and being able to prove it.
What joinery callbacks actually are
Across social housing and commercial work alike, joinery callbacks are dominated by two families: hinge and runner adjustment, and edge lifts. Doors settle in their first weeks of use, and a 35 mm clip-on hinge adjusts in three axes with a screwdriver in about five minutes. Almost none of it is structural, which is both the good news and the reason it gets underestimated.
| Item | Typical cause | Fix, when batched |
|---|---|---|
| Door out of alignment | Settling plus daily use | Hinge adjustment, about 5 minutes |
| Drawer catching or sagging | Runner needs adjustment or re-clip | About 10 minutes |
| Edge tape lifting | Steam zones, or a bond that never took | Contact adhesive re-stick or re-edge, 15-20 minutes |
| Silicone gaps at benchtop junctions | Normal shrinkage in the first year | Cut out and re-run the bead, 15 minutes |
| Soft-close not closing | Mechanism adjustment | Minutes, hardware swap at worst |
Two implications follow. First, unit rates for callbacks should assume batching, because a five-minute adjustment behind a forty-minute drive is not a five-minute job. Second, the hardware choice at tender time is a callback decision: the details that cut callback volume in half are covered in how soft-close drawers and small details reduce callbacks.
What counts as a defect, and what is wear or damage?
Every disputed line on that month-ten spreadsheet is really one question asked three ways. A defect is work or material that was not to spec, or that failed under normal use inside the period: the edge that lifted over a dry run at month three, the door that never hung square, the runner that quit under a normal drawer load. Wear is the ordinary consequence of use: scuffed toe kicks, dulled fronts, and honestly, inside 12 months genuine wear on joinery is limited. Damage is an event: the flood from an upstairs unit, the trolley strike, the door forced past its stop.
Defects belong to the joinery sub. Wear belongs to maintenance. Damage belongs to whoever caused it, which on tenanted stock is an operator conversation, not a warranty one. The reason the three-way call turns hostile is almost never the categories; it is the absence of evidence about day-one condition. A dated photo set from handover, one wide shot and one detail per kitchen, answers most arguments in thirty seconds.
The three-way call on every snag line: defect, wear or damage. Evidence beats recollection.
How a good joinery sub runs callbacks
The difference between a sub who makes money on the DLP year and one who bleeds through it is routine, and nothing else. It looks like this.
- Triage on receipt: anything water-related or safety-related gets a fast visit; cosmetic and adjustment items go into the batch.
- Batch by geography: hold non-urgent items until a block visit is worth the travel, then clear the list address by address in walk order.
- Adjust everything while there: in each kitchen, sweep every hinge and runner, not just the reported one. It adds ten to fifteen minutes and deletes the next callback.
- Carry the van kit: clip-on hinges, runners, iron-on edge tape in 21/36/45 mm widths, contact adhesive, silicone, catches, touch-up pens in the job's decor codes.
- Close with evidence: every item gets a completion photo and a date in the register, per address.
Most defects logged in the final month are a 3 mm hinge adjustment that was always going to be needed. The argument is only ever about who drives there.
The adjust-all-while-there rule deserves its own sentence, because it is the single highest-return habit in joinery aftercare. A kitchen whose every door and drawer has been swept once at month three will generate a fraction of the end-of-window list, and the sweep costs minutes. It is the same thinking that drives factory-side prevention, which is laid out in how we quality check kitchens: every defect caught before handover is a callback that never books itself.
Retentions, close-out and the paper that releases money
Retentions on the kitchen package are commonly released against defects close-out at the end of the DLP, which makes the defects register a financial document with a balance to clear. Run it live: every notified item with its address, date notified, category call (defect, wear, damage), date closed, and the closing photo. When the register hits zero and every line carries evidence, the release conversation is short.
Two documents feed that register and are best built long before defects season. The first is the photo record: the same per-address, wide-plus-detail discipline used for progress claims carries straight through to DLP evidence, and the method is described in progress claim photo evidence for joinery. Next comes the handover pack per address, care guide, warranty terms, finish and decor codes, hardware models and a touch-up kit, which turns late-window questions like 'what hinge is this' into lookups; the contents are detailed in kitchen handover packs for housing providers.
Writing the kitchen scope so DLP arguments never start
Almost every joinery DLP dispute traces back to a scope that never defined the words it would later need. The fixes cost nothing at tender time.
- State the DLP plainly: commonly 12 months from practical completion, aligned with the head contract, with the notification method named.
- Spec the hardware by cycle rating and class, soft-close hinges and runners included, so 'the drawer broke' can be tested against what was actually specified.
- Require a photographed handover condition per address, wide shot plus detail, and say who holds the file.
- State the exclusions: appliances supplied by others, damage, and wear, with the care guide defining normal use.
- Set response tiers: water-related fast, cosmetic batched, and give the sub the right to batch non-urgent items.
- Keep quote, claims and invoice on the same line items, so nobody is arguing in the final month about what was supplied; the discipline in a kitchen quote that matches the invoice is the same discipline that closes a DLP cleanly.
What to put in the next kitchen scope
Before the next package goes out, the kitchen section needs six lines: the DLP stated and aligned to the head contract, hardware specced by cycle rating, handover photos required per address, exclusions written down, response tiers defined, and a month-three adjustment sweep priced in. None of it is clever. All of it is the difference between a forty-one-line email that takes two site days to close and one that takes two arguments to survive.
We carry the callback obligation ourselves on packages we supply and install, one contract and one party from factory to defects close-out, which is why the photo files and registers described here are how our own jobs run. Send the scope or the schedule and the unit count, and the pricing comes back within 24 hours with the aftercare visible as its own lines, not buried in a rate.
Frequently asked questions
How long is the defects liability period on joinery?
On commercial work it commonly runs 12 months from practical completion, with the contract setting the exact period, the notification process and how retentions release against close-out. Read the head contract and mirror it in the joinery subcontract so both documents count the same months from the same date. Misaligned DLP dates between head contract and sub are a classic source of uncovered weeks.
What is the difference between a defect and wear and tear?
A defect is work or material that was not built to spec or that failed under normal use within the period: a door misaligned from day one, an edge lifting at month three, a runner failing under a normal load. Wear is the ordinary consequence of use, like scuffed kicks and dulled fronts, and inside 12 months genuine joinery wear is limited. The spec, the care guide and dated handover photos are what make the call provable.
Who pays for damage found during the DLP?
Whoever caused it, which is a different conversation from a defect claim. Impact marks, floods, trolley strikes and forced doors are damage events rather than workmanship failures, so they sit with the occupant, the operator or another trade rather than the joinery sub. The deciding evidence is the photographed handover condition per address: without it, damage findings drift into the defects register by default.
Are doors going out of alignment during the DLP really defects?
Doors settle in their first weeks of use, and hinge adjustment is expected aftercare rather than a workmanship failure; a 35 mm clip-on hinge adjusts in three axes in minutes. In practice these items get handled as batched callbacks inside the DLP regardless of labels, which is why pricing a scheduled month-three adjustment sweep into the package is cleaner than debating each door.
When are retentions released on a kitchen package?
Commonly against defects close-out at the end of the defects liability period, per the contract's retention regime. The practical lever is the defects register: every notified item categorised, actioned and closed with a dated photo, per address. A register that hits zero with evidence attached makes the release conversation short; a trail of half-remembered fixes makes it long and expensive.
How do you reduce joinery callbacks on a big development?
Spec soft-close hardware by cycle rating, quality-check before handover, photograph handover condition, then batch the aftercare: triage urgent items, hold the rest for block visits, and sweep every hinge and runner in each kitchen while present. A planned month-three adjustment visit absorbs the settling season. Callback volume is mostly decided at tender and handover rather than during the DLP itself.
What should a kitchen handover pack include?
Per address: the care guide defining normal use and cleaning, the warranty terms, finish and decor codes for every surface, hardware makes and models, and a touch-up kit. During the DLP it converts arguments into lookups, and after the DLP it lets any maintainer order matching parts without guesswork. Build it once per kitchen type, print it per address, and hand it over with the keys.
Does the defects liability period restart on remedied work?
Some contracts re-run the defects period on remedied or replaced work and some do not; the wording decides it, so check the clause in the head contract and mirror it in the joinery subcontract. Where it does restart, log the remedy date against each item in the defects register, because the clock on that item now runs from a different day than the rest of the kitchen.