Moving the onus of reporting from small firms

One of the obstacles on the road to getting to a prompt payment culture is an understandable reluctance from small firms to ‘report’ their clients for unfair practice. Having founded and run businesses myself, I get the need to build client relationships, and therefore a nervousness to publicly flag bad terms to which you are being subjected.

The proposed new measures and legislation, for which the government has shared its intent, will offer some relief on this very point. Here’s how:

• The casework team at the Office of the Small Business Commissioner reached a milestone of cases in the 2025/26 financial year, helping business that do come forward with a complaint. Under the new powers the Commissioner will be able to adjudicate these disputes, including confidentially, and make awards. Meaning the experienced casework team will be able to do even more to support small firms retrieve amounts owed.
• A new proposed measure is that the Office will be able to investigate companies that are repeat late paying offenders on an anonymous basis ie not identifying names of businesses that have come forward to complain about their payment practices.
• In addition, the Office will expand to take on the ‘policing’ of public payment data and will be pro-actively reviewing this data to find and potentially fine the companies with poor payment performance. It does not take too many of these cases to get known about before other public reporting companies pay attention to their own figures.

Along with all other measures being taken forward, this should ‘shift’ the onus of reporting responsibility from small firms. The more that large firms recognise new payment practices coming into effect, the more time is likely to be given to getting internal systems and practices in a place of compliance, which is already being encouraged ahead of any legislation. The more the Office of the Small Business Commissioner has resource to review data and performance, the more it can identify late payers on your behalf and take action.

We can often be found saying that the casework team which does an amazing job and relies on small businesses coming forward to report late payment is working to make itself redundant as we move to a world where cases of late payment are hopefully greatly reduced. Until we get to that point, the measures proposed do at least shift the onus so hopefully enabling you to maintain commercial relationships, whilst also ensuring you get paid.

Emma