Hi, I'm here to talk to you about the latest government announcements on late payments.

Government has launched 3 things.

The first is some research which quantifies what we all knew that late payment is the scourge on the UK economy.

Some of the statistics outlined mentioned that 133 million hours of staff time a year is spent chasing late payments.

14,000 business closures per year are down to late payments and that's 14% of business closures.

That's 38 businesses a day are down to late payment.

They've worked out that if you improve late payments in the economy by about 10%, you can get a £900 million positive effect on UK economic growth.

So having crystallised the issues around late payment in their small business plan, they've also outlined areas for change, areas that will unlock SME growth in the economy.

It also deals with things like tax, the night time economy, the ability of the High Street to pivot and the road to clean energy through electrification.

Which leads us to the third thing, a consultation.

A consultation which asks for views on various issues around late payments and the best means of reform.

Three key areas are they ask for views about the ability to agree some other remedy other than 8% interest on late payment, which is routinely abused to remove the deterrent.

The second one, should parties still be able to agree longer than 60 days, which they can currently, so long as it's not grossly unfair, but nobody really knows what grossly unfair means.

And then the third and the most pivotal issue for construction is that they are grappling with the thorny issue of retentions and asking for views on what the best solution should look like.

Should it be abolition?

Or will abolition just lead to retentions by another name?

Or should it be protection?

There are models around the world that protect retentions from both supply insolvency and client insolvency and automatically release it.

But we want two things from you #1 watch this space and we'll give you a template to fill out and express your views to government to create the biggest wave asking for the form that we've ever seen.

And #2 there's AQR code on this.

Please click on it.

Follow it and tell us what the mental health repercussions of late payment are so that we can identify the human cost of late payment to our economy and articulate those arguments to government for you.

Thank you.