Britain’s biggest companies are getting quicker at paying their bills. New official statistics show the time large businesses take to pay their suppliers has fallen, and the proportion of invoices paid late dropped to 15 per cent in 2025, down from 25 per cent when records began in 2018.
For the small firms that sit at the bottom of long supply chains, the numbers represent rare good news on an issue that has dogged the sector for decades. Late payments cost the economy £11 billion every year and result in thousands of business closures, with the immediate impact falling on owners’ ability to pay staff, cover costs and invest in growth.
The figures, published by the Government this week, draw on data reported under the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017, which require large UK businesses to disclose their payment practices, policies and performance twice a year. The information is publicly available, meaning any small supplier can check a prospective customer’s payment record before signing a contract.
The picture is not uniform. London has consistently recorded the shortest payment times and among the lowest proportions of invoices paid late of any region or nation. Manufacturing, by contrast, has consistently reported the longest payment times and the highest proportions of late invoices of any sector, a sore point for the thousands of SMEs supplying parts and services into industrial supply chains.
The improvement comes as the Government’s Commercial Payments (Late Payments) Bill makes its way through Parliament, promising the toughest payment regime in the G7 and the most significant reforms to payment practices in more than 25 years. Business Secretary Peter Kyle has already vowed the legislation will not be watered down in the face of corporate lobbying.
Emma Jones, the Small Business Commissioner, who marked her first year in the role last month, said the figures showed businesses deserved credit for changing their behaviour, but that the job was far from finished.
“Small firms tell me, and our research has shown, that they spend too many precious hours chasing debt. This is limiting capacity to focus on growth, and we want to change that. These figures show that businesses have made a conscious effort to change and improve their payment practices and that should be recognised and celebrated. But the data also shows the need for improvement in key sectors for our economy. I therefore welcome the Commercial Payment Bill and the measures it will take to improve payment performance across the country.”
Her office also manages the Government’s Fair Payment Code, a tiered awards scheme designed to drive best practice and improve payment performance. Signatories include HSBC, Barclays, NatWest and Lloyds, alongside Heathrow Airport, AstraZeneca, Aviva, AXA, BT and Welsh Water.
The direction of travel is encouraging, though few business owners will be breaking out the bunting just yet. Even at 15 per cent, roughly one in every seven invoices sent to a large customer is still settled late, and UK firms logged record levels of overdue invoices last year, leaving SMEs more than £100 billion out of pocket. The test of the new regime, when it arrives, will be whether that stubborn final seventh can be shifted too.
