Hospitality comes top of late-payers league table

The hotel and catering industry is still dragging its feet when it comes to paying bills, even though other sectors have sharpened up their act, claims a new report.

Only the construction industry matched hotels and caterers for slow payments - taking nearly three months (83 days) to settle bills. In both sectors the worst offenders were the bigger companies, according to the study by financial analysis specialist Experian. Engineering firms and motor vehicle manufacturers were only marginally better at 81 days and 80 days, respectively, while the fastest payer was the agriculture, forestry and fisheries industry, at 51.5 days.

But the report claims that in the six months from May last year, payment times across all industries improved, with a drop from 62 days to 60.75. The oil sector made the greatest improvement by speeding up payments by four days, to 66 days.

Smaller drinks firms also scored well, knocking four days off their payment time to bring it down to 62 days.

But Experian claimed that of the 150,000 companies surveyed, the large organisations had not improved and were still taking more than two months (76 days) to pay up on average

Experian predicted that following the widening of laws enabling small firms to claim interest on late payments from large companies and the public sector, more action would be taken against slow-paying small businesses.

By Sara Macefield