---
title: "Late payment in the UK is quietly improving — but your invoice still depends on who you sell to"
date: 2026-07-02T14:28:39.8+00:00
url: https://paymentcheck.co.uk/blog/reports/uk-late-payment-quietly-improving-2026
description: "We analysed over 100,000 published UK payment-practice reports. Late payment is falling — from 20% of invoices paid outside terms in 2022 to 15% now — but the gap between the fastest and slowest sectors has barely moved."
category: "Reports"
---

# Late payment in the UK is quietly improving — but your invoice still depends on who you sell to

Ask a small business owner about late payment and you'll hear that it's getting worse. The data says something more interesting: **it's getting better — slowly, quietly, and very unevenly.** At least across larger companies.

We analysed more than **100,000 payment-practice reports** that large UK companies are legally required to publish, covering half-year periods from 2022 through to the end of 2025. Three things stand out.

## 1. Fewer invoices are being paid late

In the first half of 2022, the typical large company paid **20%** of its invoices outside the terms it had agreed with suppliers. By the second half of 2025, that figure had fallen to **15%** — a quarter fewer late invoices in three years. The share of invoices left unpaid for more than 60 days fell from **7% to 5%** over the same period.

This isn't a change in who's reporting. We matched **5,445 companies** against their own figures from a year earlier: slightly more of them sped up than slowed down, and the typical company's terms-compliance improved. The improvement is real, and it's broad.

The likely reason is the one this site exists for: **transparency**. Since large companies have been required to publish how they pay, payment behaviour has a price. A poor record is now visible to every supplier, journalist and procurement team who looks.

## 2. But the speed of payment hasn't moved

Here's the catch: the typical time to pay an invoice has been **flat at around 32 days** for four years. Companies are getting better at honouring the terms they set — but they're not paying any faster. For suppliers, "we're complying with our 60-day terms" is a very different thing from "you'll be paid promptly."

## 3. Who you sell to still matters more than anything else

The gap between sectors is stark, and it is not closing:

| Slowest payers (median days to pay, H2 2025) | Fastest payers |
|---|---|
| Food & Drink — **50 days** | Human Resources — **20 days** |
| Manufacturing — **46 days** | Financial Services — **21 days** |
| Raw Materials — **45 days** | Education — **25 days** |

A supplier to the food and drink industry waits, on average, **two and a half times longer** to be paid than a supplier to a financial services firm. That gap has persisted across every period we measured.

Geography plays a part too. Companies based in **London pay in a median of 27 days**; in the **East Midlands and Yorkshire it's 37–38 days** — a ten-day gap that has held steady for years.

## One early signal worth watching

Only one sector deteriorated on both of our measures: **Marketing & Sales**. Among agencies and sales businesses filing in 2025, **55% paid slower than a year earlier** (an average of nearly 3 days slower), and it was the only sector where the share of invoices paid outside terms got *worse*. It's a modest move, not a crisis — but marketing budgets are often the first thing squeezed when clients tighten their belts, which makes this a sector to watch through 2026.

## What this means if you're owed money

- **Check before you extend credit.** Every company in the government data is searchable free on PaymentCheck — [look up any UK company's payment record](https://paymentcheck.co.uk/company-search) before you agree terms.
- **Price the sector in.** If your customers are in food, drink or manufacturing, a 45–50 day wait is normal — plan cashflow around the evidence, not the promise.
- **Use your rights.** If an invoice is late you are entitled to statutory interest and compensation — [calculate what you're owed](https://paymentcheck.co.uk/free-late-invoice-calculator).
- **Prove your own record.** Prompt payers increasingly win on trust. If you pay well, [get your own PaymentCheck score](https://paymentcheck.co.uk/get-your-score) from Xero or QuickBooks and show it.

## Methodology & caveats

This analysis covers 101,556 half-yearly payment-practice reports filed by large UK companies under the *Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017*, with figures to 31 December 2025. Sector and regional figures are medians; year-on-year changes use matched pairs (the same company compared with its own report a year earlier) to avoid composition effects. The data is **self-reported by the companies** and covers only businesses large enough to be required to file — most UK SMEs aren't in it (which is why we built [ledger-verified scores](https://paymentcheck.co.uk/get-your-score)). Reports with implausible values were excluded. Full scoring methodology [here](https://paymentcheck.co.uk/awards/methodology).

*Data: UK government payment-practice reports, analysed by PaymentCheck, 2026-07.*