The State of Payment in UK Construction, 2026

The short version

Large UK contractors and housebuilders report how quickly they pay their suppliers every six months. Taking every report filed by the companies on Construction Rating since reporting began:

• Payment has got faster. The middle average time to pay fell from 38 days in the first half of 2018 to 29 days in the first half of 2026.
• More invoices are paid within 30 days. The middle share rose from 43% to 68%.
• Fewer are paid very late or outside terms. The share paid after more than 60 days fell from 12% to 4%, and the share not paid to agreed terms fell from 28% to 11%.
• Housebuilders are slower than contractors. Over the last year, the middle average was 32 days for housebuilders and 28 days for contractors.
• Firms that later failed looked different. Among the failures in our register with enough reports, the typical company's last report showed 42% of invoices not paid to terms.

How payment has changed

The figures behind the charts: middle (median) figures across the reports for each six-month period. Each report covers one company for six months.

The periods are grouped by the month each report's period ends, so a company with a March year end appears in the January to June row.

What's behind the improvement

The reports don't say why, but three things are worth knowing.

• The Fair Payment Code and pressure from government. Public sector clients increasingly expect prompt payment from their suppliers, and the reports themselves make payment times public.
• Who is in the sample. These are the companies on Construction Rating today. Firms that failed along the way have mostly dropped out, and they tended to pay more slowly (see below). So part of the improvement is that the slow payers are no longer around.
• Averages cover every supplier. The figures include materials suppliers, plant hire and utilities as well as subcontractors. A good average doesn't mean every subcontractor is paid quickly.

Contractors and housebuilders

Over the 12 months to mid-2026, the middle average time to pay was 28 days for main contractors (181 reports) and 32 days for housebuilders (39 reports). Our payment league table splits the two and shows every company.

What the reports looked like before failures

Among the companies in our failures register with at least three payment reports before they failed (18 companies), the last report before the failure showed:

• a middle average time to pay of 38 days, against 29 days for the companies we list today
• a middle share of 42% of invoices not paid to agreed terms, against 11% today
• a rise in the share paid late compared with about two years earlier in 12 of the 18

The sample is small and covers different years, but it points the same way as our lessons-learned reports, such as Carillion: the share of invoices paid late often climbs before a contractor fails. At ISG Fit Out, it went from 14% to 68% in a year (see our ISG report). Averages hide this, so look at the share not paid to terms and how it is changing.

How to use this

• Check the trend, not just the latest report. The payment league table shows the change since each company's previous report, and you can sort by most improved or most worsened.
• Look at the share not paid to terms. It is often a better signal than the average.
• Ask about gaps. Large companies have to report twice a year. A company of that size with no report is worth a question.

Figures used in this report

• 1,952 payment practices reports from 144 companies (contractors, housebuilders and the subsidiaries that report for them), from the government's Check Payment Practices export
• Periods from July to December 2017 (20 reports) to July to December 2026 (7 so far); the first and last are left out of the table as too small
• Failures comparison: 18 companies in our register with three or more reports before failing (14 groups, as four ISG companies are included separately)