UK Payment Practices 2017-2026

Aggregate figures from 114,758 statutory payment practices reports filed by large UK companies between 2017 and 2026. Two findings Payment has improved on every measure. Median time to pay fell from 36 days in 2017 to 31 in 2026. Invoices paid within 30 days rose from 50% to 64%. Invoices not paid within agreed terms fell from 24% to 15%. This runs against the common claim that late payment is worsening. But 65.5% of companies pay slower than the terms they publish themselves. Median overshoot is 10 days; the slowest tenth run 39 days beyond their own stated terms. Files uk_payment_trend_by_year.csv - annual medians 2017 to 2026 uk_payment_distribution.csv - quartiles and deciles across all reports uk_promise_vs_practice.csv - gap between stated terms and actual payment Method and limitations Source is the statutory Payment Practices Reporting service, full bulk export. Medians throughout because a small number of extreme values would dominate any mean. Only large companies report, so nothing here describes small company behaviour. Figures are self-reported under statutory duty but not independently audited. 2026 is a partial year. The promise-versus-practice comparison uses each company's shortest stated payment period, which is the most generous reading. The true overshoot is likely larger than shown. Full method and caveats in the README. Licence CC BY 4.0. Underlying reports are public under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Compiled by Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA, Finance Clearly.