One year on: plenty done, more to do

This time last year I took on the role of Small Business Commissioner and was onboarded by a small and mighty team who, over the past 12 months, have been on a mission to make life easier for small firms by getting money moving through the economy via prompt payment.

I hope you have seen progress made and team results:

• The casework team recovered £1.5m of late paid invoices for small firms in 2025/26, the highest figure in over 5 years and an amount that exceeded our annual budget of £1.23m for the same year. Based on current case volumes, we are working to a target of recoveries exceeding budget again in 2026/27.
• The Fair Payment Code has onboarded some amazing businesses and brands who treat suppliers well and pay on time. Brands like Xero, Sage, Intuit, NatWest, HSBC, Nationwide and, just last week, Mott MacDonald, a company with £1bn+ in turnover, proving you can be big and a prompt payer.
• Major marketplaces signed a pledge setting out how sellers would be treated if accounts were put on hold and funds withheld. I’m delighted that we end my first year with constructive relationships in place with marketplaces and human points of contact to enable us to resolve most cases at pace.
• A webinar series, Get the Money Moving, has welcomed guests including the CEO of Checkatrade, Chair of Companies House, Founder of Adfin, and the head of a £37bn pension fund, to get their take on how to address the multiple layers of getting owed money paid on time.
• Two new amazing board advisors joined the team in the form of Ryan Shorthouse and Abigail Whittaker and to whom we are grateful for their counsel.
• And thanks to the many invitations, I have travelled up and down the UK to communicate our message and update on work, engaging directly with more than 5,000 people.

Getting involved beyond our payment remit, monthly SME Safaris have connected policy makers from across government to entrepreneurs in their real-life trading setting so civil servants can hear what life is like on the ground and in business. You can see write-ups from all Safaris on links below this article.

And last, but by no means least, we are following the Commercial Payments Bill through Parliament, which, when introduced will see a step change in payment culture and practices that has potential to not only get small firms paid faster but could position the UK as a world leader when it comes to applying effective legislation, technology, and enforcement to get money moving.

There is, as ever, more to do. In my second year, the focus will be continuing with quality delivery of ‘business as usual’ ie ongoing production of relevant content, retrieving funds through casework, and increasing the number of businesses on the Fair Payment Code. This will happen whilst readying the Office for its future; a future that sees new laws come into effect and an Office fit and ready to enforce.

None of this happens in a void. It is thanks to strong partnerships that we are able to deliver results and, for that, I thank you for your interest and partnership over the past year. Let’s go, year two!