A fresh industry report from Payapps has laid bare just how widespread late payment and unpaid invoices still remains for UK subcontractors — and the knock-on damage it’s doing to main contractors’ reputations and admin workloads.
The study, ‘The Construction applications for payment: Pain point or competitive advantage?’, polled 127 professionals from subcontractor firms across the UK. The headline finding is stark: 79% of respondents said they’re almost always paid late, while fewer than half (46%) regularly get payment notices or feedback on time. The report argues this points to an urgent need for more transparency, less admin burden, and greater standardisation in how payment applications are handled.
Disputes are now routine
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of subcontractors say they face regular disputes over payment applications. The most common flashpoints are unagreed variations (cited by 79% as a top-five cause of disputes) and valuation disagreements or drawn-out back-and-forth over completed work (74%).
Contractors risking their reputation
Perhaps the most striking finding is how these disputes are reshaping who subcontractors will actually work with. Almost a third (29%) have walked away from a contractor whose payment process was too much hassle, 84% say a contractor’s reputation affects whether they’ll bid for future work, and 68% have raised their rates or added a risk margin specifically because of slow or unreliable payment.
With skilled labour in short supply and competition for contracts intensifying, the report suggests contractors can no longer afford to treat payment practices as an afterthought — word travels fast in a tight-knit industry, and reputation is becoming a genuine competitive factor.
Admin overload
The report also highlights the sheer time cost of payment applications. More than half of respondents (55%) spend over 20 hours a month on general admin, and almost a quarter (24%) submit between 11 and 30 applications monthly. At an estimated 1.5 hours per application, that’s close to a full working day a month that could otherwise go toward higher-value work. More than a fifth (22%) of applications also need correcting or resubmitting with extra information — and some subcontractors say they’re squeezing the work in wherever they can (15%) or doing it after hours (17%).
Industry reaction
Anthony Puma of Payapps, who has two decades of construction industry experience, said the findings were troubling given how tight margins already are, adding that “there should be no reason to normalise delayed payments.” He pointed to outdated, inconsistent payment processes as the root cause — much of it down to subcontractors having to learn a different system for every contractor they work with — and argued that standardising and digitising the process would free up time and help rebuild trust between the two sides.
