When politicians talk about economic growth, they talk endlessly about productivity, investment and innovation.

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But they rarely talk about something far more basic - getting paid on time.

New research from Good Business Pays reveals that more than £8.75 billion in invoices were paid late by UK companies in just six months, between June and December 2025. Even more striking, over £5 billion of those invoices were not disputed at all - companies simply paid late.

For thousands of small businesses across the UK, this isn’t just frustrating, it’s existential. Small businesses are the backbone of the British economy. They employ over half of the private sector workforce and generate more than half of the UK’s private sector turnover. Yet 38 small businesses go under every single day due to cash-flow problems caused by late payments.

Behind those numbers are real businesses. Builders waiting to pay staff, manufacturers struggling to buy materials, family firms juggling overdrafts while they wait months for money they’re owed.

In effect, Britain’s small businesses are being forced to act as interest-free lenders to large corporations, and some of those corporations are household names.

According to companies’ own government-mandated disclosures, firms like City Plumbing Supplies Holdings Limited reported paying 90% of invoices late, worth more than £1 billion in undisputed payments. Travis Perkins Trading Company paid 58 per cent of its invoices late, totalling more than £791 million, and recently doubled its payment terms, which could mean some suppliers who invoice early in the month have to wait nearly three months to get paid. Meanwhile, Baxi Heating paid 96 per cent of invoices late, and Red Bull reported 85 per cent of invoices paid late.

For many small suppliers, the imbalance of power means there is little they can do. Challenge the terms, and you risk losing the contract altogether.

The problem isn’t just late payment, it’s extreme payment delays. Some companies now take more than 100 days on average to pay suppliers. Vestas Celtic Wind Technology reported an average payment term of 135 days, while parts of the Reckitt Benckiser group reported payment times of more than 120 days.

Imagine waiting four months to be paid for work you’ve already delivered.

To their credit, the government has made progress on transparency. Companies are now required to publish detailed data about how quickly they pay suppliers. That’s how we know the scale of the problem, but transparency alone won’t fix a broken system.

Late payment persists because there are still no meaningful consequences for the worst offenders. For some large companies, delaying payments is simply a working-capital strategy - a way of boosting their own cash flow at the expense of smaller firms and a total imbalance of power.

If the government is serious about supporting growth, this is one of the simplest economic reforms it could make. Introduce stronger enforcement, financial penalties for persistent late payers, and give small businesses stronger legal rights to challenge unfair payment practices.

Because the truth is this: Britain doesn’t have a small business problem. It has a big business payment culture problem.

And until that changes, billions of pounds that should be flowing through the economy are not. Paying wages, funding investment, and supporting growth will remain stuck in corporate accounts.

Getting paid on time shouldn’t be a radical demand, but for Britain’s small businesses, it’s the difference between surviving and closing their doors.

Terry Corby is the Founder and CEO of Good Business Pays. For the past five years, Terry has led the charge to change supplier payment culture in the UK, reducing the country’s long-standing problem with late payments.

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