UK Late Payment Index
How long do the UK's biggest buyers make small suppliers wait?
An aggregate, half-yearly trend built from every large UK business's statutory Payment Practices Reporting filing. No individual company is named or ranked.
Key findings
- Large UK businesses reported an average of 33.5 days to pay invoices in H1 2026, down from 39.1 days in H2 2017, a fall of 14.3%.
- 60.5% of invoices were paid within 30 days in the latest period, and 20.6% were paid outside the agreed contractual terms altogether.
- 3,120 large businesses filed a Payment Practices Reporting return for this period, each disclosing their own average time to pay across all supplier invoices.
Source: Payment Practices Reporting service (gov.uk), a statutory disclosure. Figures are aggregate only; no individual company is named. Free to cite with attribution to Holloway Davies.
Mean days to pay, by half-year
Average of every large business's self-reported "average time to pay" figure, aggregated by the half-year reporting period. A small number of implausible values (outside 0 to 365 days) are excluded as data-entry errors.
Full half-year series
| Period | Mean days | Median days | % within 30d | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H2 2017 | 39.1 | 36 | 49.8% | 833 |
| H1 2018 | 37.3 | 35 | 53.1% | 5,824 |
| H2 2018 | 36.8 | 35 | 53.6% | 7,183 |
| H1 2019 | 36.8 | 35 | 54.4% | 7,418 |
| H2 2019 | 35.9 | 34 | 55.5% | 7,155 |
| H1 2020 | 36.9 | 34 | 54.7% | 6,828 |
| H2 2020 | 37.7 | 35 | 55.2% | 6,669 |
| H1 2021 | 36.8 | 34 | 56.2% | 6,638 |
| H2 2021 | 35.8 | 33 | 57.3% | 6,503 |
| H1 2022 | 35.6 | 33 | 57.2% | 6,429 |
| H2 2022 | 35.5 | 33 | 57.9% | 6,330 |
| H1 2023 | 35.5 | 32 | 58.2% | 6,292 |
| H2 2023 | 34.9 | 32 | 58.6% | 6,486 |
| H1 2024 | 34.7 | 32 | 59.2% | 6,482 |
| H2 2024 | 34.3 | 32 | 59.8% | 6,450 |
| H1 2025 | 34.4 | 32 | 59.5% | 6,237 |
| H2 2025 | 34.6 | 32 | 59.5% | 6,167 |
| H1 2026 | 33.5 | 31 | 60.5% | 3,120 |
Methodology and sources
Data source. The full CSV export of the Payment Practices Reporting service, which contains every filing made by every large UK business since the regulations took effect in April 2017.
What is counted. Filings are bucketed into half-year periods by each company's own reporting period end date (not a fixed calendar half), then averaged. "Average time to pay" is each filer's own self-reported figure across all its supplier invoices, not isolable by sector or contract type.
Aggregation policy. This page reports only aggregate statistics. No individual company is named, ranked, or identifiable from the figures shown. The earliest half-year (regime start-up) and the most recent half-year (still filing) are shown with reduced confidence due to lower filing volume.
- Payment Practices Reporting -- full CSV export (Department for Business and Trade)
Download the late payment data (CSV)
Free to cite and republish with attribution to Holloway Davies. This page is a data summary and does not constitute financial or business advice.
Late payment squeezing your cash flow?
Credit control, invoice financing and cash flow forecasting can all soften the impact of slow-paying customers. Holloway Davies helps UK small businesses build a cash flow position that survives a late-paying client.
Frequently asked questions
How long do large UK businesses take to pay invoices?
Large UK businesses reported an average of 33.5 days to pay supplier invoices in H1 2026 (median 31 days), based on their own statutory Payment Practices Reporting filings, aggregated across 3,120 reporting companies.
What is Payment Practices Reporting?
It is a statutory disclosure regime under the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017. Large UK businesses (broadly, meeting at least two of: turnover above £36 million, balance sheet above £18 million, more than 250 employees) must publish a return every six months disclosing their average time to pay, the share of invoices paid within 30, 60 days or later, and their standard payment terms.
Is late payment to small suppliers getting better or worse?
On this aggregate measure, it has improved: mean days-to-pay fell 14.3% from 39.1 days in H2 2017 to 33.5 days in H1 2026, and the share of invoices paid outside agreed terms has fallen over the same period. Individual buyer-supplier relationships vary widely; this is an economy-wide aggregate, not a guarantee for any particular contract.
Why doesn't this page name individual companies?
This index is deliberately kept aggregate. The underlying Payment Practices Reporting register is public and does name individual filers, but ranking named companies risks reputational unfairness (average time to pay is a single self-reported figure that does not capture context, disputes, or specific contract terms). We report the aggregate national trend instead.
Where does this data come from?
The full Payment Practices Reporting CSV export, published by the Department for Business and Trade at check-payment-practices.service.gov.uk. It is a statutory public disclosure, not OGL-badged data, but freely reusable; the underlying filings are made under legal obligation.