Forum of Private Business welcomes additional late payment powers
Business support organisation, the Forum of Private Business, has welcomed the announcement from the business secretary that additional powers are being given to the small business commissioner to address the issue of late payment of invoices to small businesses.
Late payment, principally by large corporates, has a major impact of the cash flow of small businesses, and is an issue that the Forum has lobbied hard on addressing.
In responding to the announcement, CEO of the Forum, Ian Cass said, “The Forum of Private business has been campaigning for better payment practices since they were formed in the 1970’s. We want to encourage government to put the mechanisms in place to create a change in the UK’s payment culture and are supporters of the pay in 30 days campaign.
Since the appointment of the small business commissioner, the Forum of Private Business has been calling for the role to be given more powers, firstly to investigate and survey businesses about bad payment practices, secondly to be given some teeth, with powers to fine persistent late payers and thirdly to make sure that the prompt payment code is correctly applied and governed so that we avoid issues, similar those we had with Carillion and other businesses who run early payment schemes while regularly paying suppliers in over 90 days”.
