Tackling late payments

It wants to hear views and experiences on the impact of unfair payment practices, and proposals for measures to create a more responsible payment culture.

It says ‘In recent years government has taken steps to tackle the problem of late payment, introducing measures such as the Small Business Commissioner and the Payment Practices Reporting Regulations.

‘As of 2017, the amount owed to smaller businesses in late payments more than halved from the previous 5 years but we understand the need to go further to tackle unfair payment practices. The level of late payment debt owed to small and medium-sized businesses remains far too high and many small firms still have no choice but to trade on terms which are too long, imposed on them by larger customers.’

This call for evidence seeks views on what more the government can do to create a responsible payment culture, including:

• the current experiences of businesses in their payment practices
• the impact of existing measures to improve payment practices and what more can be done to further refine measures and promote good practice
• whether new measures should be introduced to further encourage a responsible payment culture

This consultation closes 11:45pm on 29 November 2018

Consultation documents are available here