UK late payment statistics

The scale of the problem

Research commissioned by the Department for Business & Trade (2025) put the stock of late payments owed to UK businesses at around £26 billion at any given time — roughly £17,000 per affected business — and estimated that late payment drives around 14,000 business closures a year, about 38 every day. Earlier research by the Federation of Small Businesses put the toll higher still, estimating up to 50,000 closures a year — methodologies differ, but every serious estimate lands in the thousands of businesses lost annually to a problem that is, at root, other people not paying their bills.

The problem is near-universal: Coface's 2025 UK Payment Survey found 90% of UK companies experienced late payment, with small firms the most exposed.

How late is "late"?

Xero's Small Business Insights, which tracks live invoicing data, shows UK small businesses waited an average of 29.3 days to be paid in June 2026, with invoices settled 8.3 days late on average — a modest improvement on 29.6 days and 9.2 days a year earlier. Averages flatter the tail: the invoices that stretch to 60 and 90 days are the ones that become bad debts.

What creditors can do about it

UK law arms creditors better than most realise: statutory interest currently at 11.75% plus £40–£100 fixed compensation per invoice, a free calculator to apply them, and a well-trodden recovery process that resolves most debts without court.