Late payment improvements tail off

However, UK firms are paying late bills 11.6 per cent faster than last year, according to Experian data

UK firms took 20.75 days to pay late bills in February - an improvement of 11.6 per cent on the previous year

The number of days taken for late-paying UK firms to settle outstanding payments remained relatively unchanged in February, research shows.

According to figures from credit services specialist Experian, UK firms paid their bills an average of 20.75 days beyond their agreed payment terms last month, which was 0.1 days longer than in January.

Up until last month, the number of days taken by UK firms to pay outstanding bills had fallen five times in the last six months.

Despite the slight blip, Experian’s Late Payment Survey showed that the number of days taken to pay bills in February was down 11.6 per cent on the same month last year.

SMEs demonstrated the biggest improvement in payment performance by taking just 17.61 days to pay off late bills, which Experian said represents the fastest that any business segment has paid their bills since March 2008.

Joe Myers, head of commercial credit at Experian, said: “All businesses are increasingly aware of how important maintaining good payment performance is to their credit scores. However, for smaller businesses it has a far greater significance and this is reflected in their payment performance.”