Balfour and Kier still taking 50 days or more to settle up

The country’s two biggest contractors are still taking at least 50 days to settle their bills, new government data has revealed.

The first set of comprehensive data on how quickly firms pay their bills was released last summer and showed Balfour Beatty and Kier topped the slowest payers list among the 10 biggest contractors and housebuilders in the country at 54 days.

Balfour Beatty has now cut this to 50 days with Kier slicing just two days off the time it takes to settle up.

The figures mean that Kier is now the slowest payer among the top 10 contractors and housebuilder in the second round of payment data firms are now obliged to release under law.

The country’s biggest private contractor, Laing O’Rourke, is taking 53 days to pay up but this number is for its debut set of figures as it has a different reporting period than most other contractors and housebuilders. Its next set of figures will be for the six months up to March this year which it is required to publish the following month.

Out of the top 40 housebuilders and contractors ranked by turnover, Mears had the longest payment terms of 58 days when it last reported but the firm failed to update its figures by its deadline of 31 January.

The biggest improver was Persimmon, who went from taking an average of 50 days to pay its invoices in July 2018, to taking just seven days when it updated its figures on 30 January.

Meanwhile, McLaren Construction and Costain failed to pay the largest amount of invoices within agreed terms, paying 66% and 61% of bills outside of the agreed time frame respectively.

Large businesses are required to report their figures twice a year, within a month of both their full- and half-year reporting period ending.

A large business is a company or limited liability partnership that has at least two of the following: £36m in turnover, £18m on its balance sheet or 250 employees.