Government Ministers have initiated a long awaited consultation on plans for a Late Payment ‘Tsar’.
The long overdue plans plans are set to aid small businesses by appointing a commissioner to tackle the ever present problem within UK Business of the late payment of invoices.
One of the major actions that is said to be being taken is steps to create a statutory requirement for all large companies to document their payment practices.
The role had been initially announced in July 2015 but no formal action plan was created to follow through on the recommendations previously made.
Prior to that in the March, it was also announced that large companies would be forced to publish details of their payment practices every six months or so.
Anna Soubry, the Minister for Small Business at the time, had said in the House of Commons that these new provisions would not be implemented till October 2015.
It is now October 2016. There are still no formal provisions in place to combat the problem of business late payment and many want to see action taken sooner rather than later.
The Department for Business has stated that the latest government consultation will review ‘how the small business commissioner will operate and handle complaints’.
It was also suggested that the new proposed scheme will be open to responses from businesses of all sizes.
Quite how they propose to do this with late payment affecting so many companies across the United Kingdom remains to be seen.
Only recently did we run a story on the massive hole created by companies not paying invoices on time.
It is clear that the late payment of invoices continues to blight the UK’s economy. With all the economic uncertainty in the economy following the Brexit vote, constructive action to tackle the late payment problem will be seen as a boost to the economy.
