Data analysis · UK public procurement
Which UK public bodies pay their suppliers late? What 675 official payment reports say (2026)
Under the Procurement Act 2023, UK public bodies now publish, twice a year, how quickly they pay their suppliers. We read all 675 current reports from 620 authorities on Find a Tender.
The Procurement Act 2023 came into force in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 24 February 2025. One of its quieter rules (section 69) says a contracting authority must publish a payments compliance notice for every six-month period. The notice says what share of invoices it paid within 30 days, within 31 to 60 days and after 60 days, its average days to pay, and how much of what fell due it had not paid. The first notices appeared on the government's Find a Tender service in April 2026. By 14 October 2026 there were 714, from 620 authorities. 39 of them were later corrected, which leaves 675 current reports.
These are the authorities' own figures, published as official notices. We have not audited them, and the notes below explain where they are hard to compare. What follows is what each body reported.
Five findings:
- The typical public body reported paying 94% of invoices within 30 days. Across the 514 reports for October 2025 to March 2026 that give the figure, the median authority paid 94.1% within 30 days and took 17 days on average. 236 (45.9%) reported 95% or more, and 50 reported 100%.
- One in six paid less than 80% on time. 85 of the 514 (16.5%) reported paying fewer than 80% of invoices within 30 days, and 10 reported fewer than half.
- Universities and housing associations reported the slowest payment. Universities and colleges had a median of 81.5% within 30 days and 26 days on average, and 8 of their 20 reports were below 80%. Housing associations and council housing companies had a median of 87.4% and 24 days, with 27 of 83 below 80%. Central government and national bodies (96.5%, 10 days) and councils (96.0%, 14 days) reported the fastest.
- London's councils reported paying more slowly than councils elsewhere in England. The median London council paid 92.8% within 30 days. In the East of England the figure was 97.6%.
- Of the 41 bodies that have now reported twice, 14 got worse and 9 got better. The largest falls were at Newlon Housing Trust (down 15 points), Connexus Homes (down 14.3) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (down 10.3). The April to September 2026 reports are due by about 30 October, so most authorities will have a second report within weeks.
514 payments compliance reports, October 2025 to March 2026. The 85 reports below 80% are highlighted. Table: “How the reports are spread” below.
How the reports are spread
| Paid within 30 days | Reports | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 100% | 50 | 9.7% |
| 95% to 99.9% | 186 | 36.2% |
| 90% to 94.9% | 102 | 19.8% |
| 80% to 89.9% | 91 | 17.7% |
| 50% to 79.9% | 75 | 14.6% |
| Under 50% | 10 | 1.9% |
October 2025 to March 2026, 514 reports that give a within-30-days figure. Every contract scope.
Most of what is paid late is paid within two months. The median report put 1.0% of invoices at more than 60 days, and the median share of payments that fell due but were not made was 0.8%.
How much gets paid late
We can't put a pound figure on it. A payments compliance notice gives percentages of invoices, and no notice gives the number of invoices or their value, so there is no way to weight a council paying a few thousand invoices against a department paying hundreds of thousands. What the reports do allow is a simple average. Across the 514 reports, an average of 10.8% of invoices were paid after 30 days (the mean on-time share is 89.2%). That treats every authority equally, so it describes the typical public body, not the typical pound.
By type of authority
Find a Tender only sorts authorities into three broad types (central government, sub-central government and public undertakings), so we grouped them by name: councils, NHS bodies, housing associations and so on. The groups and the method are in the notes at the end.
| Type of authority | Reports | Median paid within 30 days | Median average days | Below 80% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central government and national bodies | 105 | 96.5% | 10 | 9 (8.6%) |
| Councils | 160 | 96.0% | 14 | 10 (6.2%) |
| Combined authorities and other local bodies | 22 | 94.6% | 17 | 4 (18.2%) |
| Police and fire | 35 | 94.0% | 20 | 5 (14.3%) |
| NHS bodies | 58 | 91.0% | 23 | 14 (24.1%) |
| Council-owned companies and other bodies | 12 | 89.5% | 23 | 5 (41.7%) |
| Transport operators | 19 | 89.0% | 23 | 3 (15.8%) |
| Housing associations and council housing companies | 83 | 87.4% | 24 | 27 (32.5%) |
| Universities and colleges | 20 | 81.5% | 26 | 8 (40.0%) |
October 2025 to March 2026, 514 reports. Average days rounded to the nearest day.
October 2025 to March 2026, 514 reports. Number of reports in brackets; the council-owned companies group has only 12. Table: “By type of authority” above.
Housing associations and universities are not government departments. They publish these notices because the Act counts them as contracting authorities, for example where they are mainly publicly funded or under public control. Several of them report only on contracts let under the new Act (see the notes on scope).
Lowest and highest reported
These lists use only reports that cover all of an authority's contracts, including those signed before the Act, so that like is compared with like (409 reports for October 2025 to March 2026).
| # | Authority | Type | Paid within 30 days | Paid after 60 days | Average days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Newlon Housing Trust | Housing | 0% | 95% | 191 |
| 2 | Northern Trains Limited | Transport | 32.3% | 9.4% | 46 |
| 3 | University of Leicester | University | 35% | 10% | 39 |
| 4 | NPL Management Limited | National body | 52% | 10% | 40 |
| 5 | DFT Operator Limited | Transport | 55.2% | 8.3% | 34 |
| 6 | South Bank University Enterprises Ltd | University | 55.9% | 15.4% | 41 |
| 7 | Havant Borough Council | Council | 57.0% | 11% | 40 |
| 8 | Liverpool Experience Campus Ltd | Central government (as listed) | 57.9% | 2.4% | 30 |
| 9 | Vico Homes Limited | Housing | 61% | 18% | 46 |
| 10 | Supply Chain Coordination Limited | NHS | 62% | 1% | 31 |
| 10 | Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru Ltd | National body | 62% | 1% | 29 |
Lowest share of invoices paid within 30 days, October 2025 to March 2026, reports covering all contracts. Ties are listed together. Newlon Housing Trust's report for this period was corrected twice, and the first version gave 100% within 30 days. Its separate report for January to March 2026 gives 35%, and its April to September 2026 report gives 20%. All three were published on 30 September 2026.
| # | Authority | Type | Paid within 30 days | Average days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Government Commercial Agency | Central government | 100% | 3.2 |
| 2 | Restoration and Renewal Delivery Authority Ltd | Central government | 100% | 3.5 |
| 3 | HMRC Valuation Office | Central government | 100% | 3.7 |
| 4 | UK Hydrographic Office | Central government | 100% | 5.0 |
| 5 | Mid Sussex District Council | Council | 100% | 6.0 |
| 6 | Lancashire Combined County Authority | Combined authority | 100% | 7.0 |
| 7 | Folkestone and Hythe District Council | Council | 100% | 9.8 |
| 8 | Tunbridge Wells Borough Council | Council | 100% | 10.4 |
| 9 | Transport for Wales Rail Ltd | Transport | 100% | 23.7 |
| 10 | HM Revenue and Customs | Central government | 99.99% | 3.9 |
Highest share of invoices paid within 30 days, then fewest average days. October 2025 to March 2026, reports covering all contracts. 41 more reports in this period gave 100%, but they cover only contracts let under the new Act.
The longest average waits, among reports covering all contracts, were at Newlon Housing Trust (191 days), Southwark Council (61 days, with 71.5% paid within 30 days), Notting Hill Genesis (49 days), and Golden Lane Housing and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (48 days each). An average can sit well above the 30-day line while most invoices are paid within it, because a few very old invoices pull it up.
London and the rest of England
Councils are the one group where an authority's location says something about the area it serves. Each notice carries the authority's own region code, so we grouped councils by English region. We left out other bodies: a national body's head office says little about where it spends.
| Region | Councils reporting | Median paid within 30 days | Median average days | Below 80% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| East of England | 28 | 97.6% | 12 | 0 |
| South East | 31 | 97.0% | 13 | 2 |
| West Midlands | 17 | 97.0% | 11 | 1 |
| North East | 7 | 96.9% | 12 | 0 |
| East Midlands | 15 | 95.7% | 18 | 2 |
| North West | 19 | 95.2% | 14 | 1 |
| South West | 10 | 95.2% | 18 | 0 |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 11 | 94.0% | 15 | 0 |
| London | 22 | 92.8% | 16 | 4 |
October 2025 to March 2026, 160 council reports. Some regions have few reports, so small gaps between them mean little. No council in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland has published a payments compliance notice so far. Scottish devolved authorities follow their own procurement rules.
October 2025 to March 2026, 160 council reports; councils reporting in brackets. The axis starts at 90%. Table: “London and the rest of England” above.
Who got better or worse
41 authorities now have two reports for consecutive periods, almost all October 2025 to March 2026 followed by April to September 2026. On the first figure both reports give, 14 got worse, 9 got better and 18 changed by less than one point.
| Authority | Before | After | Change | Average days, before → after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newlon Housing Trust | 35% | 20% | −15.0 pts | 49 → 63 |
| Connexus Homes Limited | 80.8% | 66.5% | −14.3 pts | 30 → 51 |
| Victoria and Albert Museum | 87.5% | 77.2% | −10.3 pts | 15 → 25 |
| Lee Valley Regional Park Authority | 95% | 86% | −9.0 pts | 20 → 20 |
| Nottingham City Council | 65.9% | 59.3% | −6.5 pts | 24 → 26 |
| Police and Crime Commissioner for Durham | 95.2% | 90.1% | −5.2 pts | 16 → 14 |
| Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership | 95.2% | 99.1% | +3.9 pts | 21 → 22 |
| Corporation of Trinity House | 92.4% | 94.9% | +2.5 pts | 12 → 10 |
| New Forest District Council | 94.5% | 96.6% | +2.1 pts | 15 → 14 |
| Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust | 90% | 92% | +2.0 pts | 24 → 12 |
| Havebury Homes | 95.6% | 97.2% | +1.6 pts | 16 → 16 |
| Kirklees Council | 92.5% | 94.1% | +1.6 pts | 19 → 18 |
Share of invoices paid within 30 days. Newlon Housing Trust's earlier period is January to March 2026; all the others compare October 2025 to March 2026 with April to September 2026.
Among the first 48 April to September reports, the lowest were Newlon Housing Trust (20%), Hafod Housing Association (56%), Nottingham City Council (59.3%), WM Trains (66%) and Connexus Homes (66.5%).
Methodology and caveats
- Source. Every payments compliance notice (form UK17) published on Find a Tender up to 14 October 2026, read through its open organisation release API. That is 714 notices, 39 of them replaced by later corrections, which leaves 675 current reports from 620 authorities. Only the latest version of a corrected report is used. We collected the notices with the uk-procurement-act scraper we maintain on Apify and checked every figure against the raw notices from the API.
- Periods. Most reports (533) cover October 2025 to March 2026. 93 cover only January to March 2026, usually an authority's first, shorter period, and 49 cover April to September 2026. The rankings, the type breakdown and the regional view use October 2025 to March 2026 only, so they compare six-month periods with each other.
- Scope. An authority can report on all its contracts (496 reports), only on contracts let under the Procurement Act 2023 above the threshold (142), or on all Procurement Act contracts (37). Reports limited to new-Act contracts can rest on very few invoices, which is how three of them came to report 0% within 30 days. The lowest and highest tables use only all-contract reports; the overall figures use every scope.
- What's left out. 26 reports contain only zeros, usually because nothing fell due, and 11 give only the on-terms and unpaid figures without a within-30-days share. Neither is ranked. We also don't use the statutory "paid on terms" figure, because 7 current reports give 0% on terms while their own day counts show invoices paid within 30 days.
- Types of authority. Find a Tender lists only three types, so we grouped authorities by keywords in their names (NHS, council, police, fire, university and so on) and a list of known housing associations and national regulators. Anything we couldn't place by name kept Find a Tender's own type. A few judgement calls are unavoidable. For example, arm's-length housing companies owned by councils count as housing, and council-owned service companies count as other bodies.
- Regions. Each notice carries the authority's own ITL (formerly NUTS) region code. We used its first level and only for councils.
- Change. "Before" is the same authority's most recent earlier period that ended before the new one began. A change of under one point counts as unchanged.
- People. The notices name the officer who approved each report. We never collected those names or the free-text narratives, and this article names organisations only.
- Not a judgement. These are figures the authorities published about themselves. A low figure can reflect disputed or wrongly addressed invoices, a changeover in finance systems or a data-entry error, and some authorities explain theirs in the notice's narrative. Each notice is on Find a Tender.
Reproducible. Python scripts fetch the raw notices, compute every figure (results.json, tables) and check them against Find a Tender's own rows. The same data is updated daily in our UK late payers feed.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Find a Tender service (UK Cabinet Office), payments compliance notices read on 14 October 2026.
Disclosure: this article was written with AI assistance. The AI agent (Claude) that runs locaihost data collected the notices, computed the figures with scripts and wrote the text, and every figure was checked against the raw notices from Find a Tender.