How long do large construction firms actually take to pay? What the statutory data shows

The number that matters: how long do you actually wait to get paid

Every large UK business, broadly one meeting two of: over 250 employees, over £36 million turnover, or over £18 million balance sheet total, must publish a report on how it pays its suppliers, by law, twice a year. This is the Payment Practices Reporting (PPR) service, and it exists specifically so that suppliers, subcontractors and the public can see how a large business actually pays.^[1]

Trade Tax Specialists compiled the full PPR disclosure for large businesses that flagged having qualifying construction contracts in their most recent reporting period, then cross-referenced each one against its registered Companies House SIC code to keep only genuine construction-sector businesses.^[2] That left 225 companies with a clean, sourced, self-reported "average time to pay" figure. The full dataset, searchable and sortable, is published at our UK Construction Payment Practices League.

The headline number: the median average time to pay across those 225 businesses is 33.0 days, and the mean is 35.5 days.^[1] That is the company's own reported figure, an overall average across all supplier invoices paid in the period, not isolated to construction contracts specifically. But every company in the dataset does hold qualifying construction contracts, so the figure is directly relevant to how they pay the subcontractors on their sites.

The spread: most large firms pay slower than 30 days

The median of 33 days sits just above what many subcontractors would consider a reasonable payment term. But the median hides a wide spread. Of the 225 companies in the dataset:^[1]

• 62.2% (140 companies) report an average time to pay above 30 days.
• 23.1% (52 companies) report an average above 45 days.
• 37.8% (85 companies) pay, on average, within 30 days.
• 8 companies report that more than half their invoices are paid later than 60 days after the invoice date.

The middle 50% of the dataset (the interquartile range) runs from 28 days at the 25th percentile to 45 days at the 75th percentile. In other words, a subcontractor working with a company drawn at random from this list has a roughly even chance of dealing with a main business whose own reported average sits somewhere between four weeks and six and a half weeks.

The slowest and fastest payers in the dataset

At the slow end, Alstom Transport UK Limited (company number 08462831, SIC 42120, construction of railways and underground railways) reports the highest average time to pay in the dataset, at 71 days. Its own filing shows only 18% of invoices paid within 30 days, 28% paid between 31 and 60 days, and 54% paid later than 60 days, with 40% of invoices not paid to agreed terms.^[1]

Close behind, Van Elle Limited (SIC 42990, other civil engineering) reports 65 days, and Ainscough Crane Hire Ltd (SIC 43999, other specialised construction activities) reports 64 days. All three figures are drawn from each company's own statutory Payment Practices Reporting filing, published on gov.uk under the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017.^[1] None of this is an allegation of wrongdoing: a longer reported average can reflect a business's standard agreed payment terms as much as genuine delay, and large main contractors are entitled to set their own terms within the law.

At the fast end, Bennett Management Contractors (GB) Limited (SIC 41201, construction of commercial buildings) reports the shortest average time to pay in the dataset, at 2 days, with 100% of its invoices paid within 30 days and retention clauses applied to all of its qualifying construction contracts.^[1]

Retentions: the gap the headline figure does not show

The average time to pay measures how long a company takes to settle an invoice once it falls due. It says nothing about retentions, the percentage of a contract's value that a main contractor withholds beyond the payment date, commonly for 6 to 18 months after practical completion, as security against defects.

In this dataset, 23.1% of the 225 companies (52 of them) report using retention clauses on all of their qualifying construction contracts.^[1] For a subcontractor working with one of those businesses, the real cash-flow gap between finishing the work and having all of the money in hand is the reported days-to-pay figure on the invoiced amount, plus however long the retention itself is held back on top. A company that pays quickly on its invoices but retains a slice of every contract for over a year can still leave a subcontractor carrying a significant working-capital gap.

What this means for CIS cashflow specifically

None of this changes how CIS itself operates. A contractor deducts 20% (or 30%, if you are not CIS-registered) from the labour element of a payment when that payment is actually made, and reports it on the monthly CIS return.^[2] If a main contractor's own average time to pay is 60 or 71 days, the CIS deduction on that invoice does not happen any sooner. The deduction, and any repayment or offset you are entitled to, follows the payment date, not the invoice date.

That means a slow-paying main contractor creates two separate cash-flow problems for a subcontractor at once: the underlying invoice value is outstanding for longer, and the CIS deduction that will eventually apply to it is also delayed, along with any repayment claim that depends on it. A limited company can offset CIS deductions against its own PAYE and NIC liabilities monthly through the Employer Payment Summary, which softens this to some extent by not requiring a wait until the following Self Assessment year end, but it does not remove the underlying exposure to how slowly the client actually pays.

What a subcontractor can do about it

• Check before you sign. The UK Construction Payment Practices League is free to search. Before agreeing terms with a large main contractor, check their own reported average time to pay and the share of invoices paid later than 60 days.
• Negotiate shorter terms where you can. The longer the agreed credit period, the more completed work sits as an unpaid balance at any given moment, regardless of whether the contractor pays reliably to those terms.
• Invoice in stages on longer contracts. This caps the maximum amount outstanding at any point, rather than letting a full contract value build up before a single payment date.
• Keep a written retention register. Track which contractor holds what amount, when the defects liability period ends, and what the contract says about release, separately from your general debtor list.
• Use the statutory adjudication right. The Construction Act gives subcontractors a right to adjudication for payment disputes, which is faster than court action, if a payment is disputed or simply not made to the terms agreed.
• Keep CIS cashflow planning separate from client payment behaviour. A slow-paying client should not be allowed to also distort your own tax position. Our team can review your CIS position, Employer Payment Summary offsets, and gross payment status eligibility alongside your actual client payment terms.

The full underlying dataset, including every company's individual figures, is available at our UK Construction Payment Practices League. For the wider picture of financial risk across the sector, see our UK Construction Insolvency Index and UK Construction Survival Index.

1. Department for Business and Trade, Payment Practices Reporting service, full CSV export, retrieved 23 July 2026. check-payment-practices.service.gov.uk. Companies cross-referenced against Companies House registered SIC codes. Figures compiled in our UK Construction Payment Practices League. Statutory public disclosure under the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017.
2. Companies House company profile API, Open Government Licence v3.0. developer.company-information.service.gov.uk, used for SIC code cross-reference against the PPR dataset.