Hi - Grateful for your thoughts.

An agent of the landowner will arrange works which will be paid for by commercial tenants via a service charge. The agent will take a fee for arranging these works from the service charge.

The landowner will not pay the agent for arranging the works nor contribute to the costs of the works.

Who is the CDM Client in this scenario? Can the agent assume the CDM Client role? There is an option to engage the agent as Principal Contractor but we want people's thoughts on the CDM Client query.

Many thanks.

From the regulation definitions: “client” means any person for whom a project is carried out

As the agent is taking money to organise and fund the task (the project) they would be the "client"

Despite the presence of commercial tennants paying a service charge they have no direct control or influence over the project and neither does the land owner. Whilst they may benefit from the activity they are not involved in the contractual arrangements in execution of the activity.

Hi Northeast

In about 1995 I used to comment in CDM training sessions that there were 100 difficult questions wtih CDM and that I had dealt with 99 of them and that I still didn't know what the 100th question was.

Anyway your question is a variant on one of the 99.

Roundtuit has set out the CDM definition of "client".

Arguably all the parties you refer to might fall within that definition.

What CDM doesn't say is that if something isn't fully defined, then legal convention says you go to the parent legislation (in this case HSWA) for help with understanding something and if that doesn't work (it doesn't) then you default to the Interpretation Act 1978.

So the 1978 Act says that any reference to something in the singular includes the plural and vice versa UNLESS the contrary is explicit.

AND as nothing in the CDM definition of "client" says that you can only have one "client" you can have more than one and often do.

This was recognised in the associated guidance that came out with CDM 1994, eg CIRIA Report 172 "CDM Regulations - Practical guidance for clients and clients' agents".

CDM 2007 dropped the concept of a "client's agent" which was a pity as it was one way of solving many of the problems with projects with multiple clients.

However, CDM 2007 and now 2015 do not preclude sensible decision making, e.g. to decide who is the "Lead Client" (NOT a defined term) who will take on the Client's duties for part or all of the duration of the "project". [In some forms of procurement might be sensible to pass the baton on part way through - e.g. in PFI specifically covered in R172].

If in your scenario the agent is content to take on the CDM Client function on behalf of e.g. the Landowner (probably the Lead Client, as they are the corporate body with a stake in the site that extends beyond the length of the lease for each tenant) then fine.

What is needed is some bits of paper to say who is responsible for what. Might be that those bits of paper don't need to say very much.

Originally Posted by: peter gotch

What CDM doesn't say is that if something isn't fully defined, then legal convention says you go to the parent legislation (in this case HSWA) for help with understanding something and if that doesn't work (it doesn't) then you default to the Interpretation Act 1978.

So the 1978 Act says that any reference to something in the singular includes the plural and vice versa UNLESS the contrary is explicit.

You don't need all that reasoning and inference.  CDM regs themselves explicitly discuss scanerios with multiple clients: "Where there is more than one client in relation to a project— (a) one or more of the clients may agree in writing to be treated for the purposes of these Regulations as the only client or clients;" (Reg 4)

CDM regs explicitly allow for the existence of multiple clients for a singular project.

Edited by user 17 October 2024 07:30:11(UTC)  | Reason: spalling