The data suggests a marginal, almost negligible, improvement in payment practices within the professional services sector. While any positive movement is welcome, a change of less than one point across a large sample size indicates that fundamental shifts in payment efficiency were not observed. Companies continuing to struggle with slow payments might consider the tools available to them, such as this late payment calculator to understand the true cost of outstanding invoices.
Summary: Across 172-173 professional services companies, payment practices improved from 70.1 to 71.0 out of 100 between 2020 and 2021.

We analysed over 100,000 published UK payment-practice reports. Late payment is falling — from 20% of invoices paid outs
How UK companies' payment practices changed in 2025 — the biggest improvers, the firms slipping, and the strongest new e
The UK agriculture sector is significantly outperforming the UK average for payment practices, suggesting a degree of fi
The year-on-year decline of 0.1 points, while statistically insignificant, suggests a stagnation in payment performance