The payment index for the UK building trades · running since 2014
Two thousand three hundred and eighty contractors, subcontractors and consultants, each shown with how long they take to settle a subcontractor's invoice and how much retention they have actually released. The trade knows these numbers already. Until now it only ever knew them in the pub.
The index
Nothing matches that search. to see everything.
Where the figures come from
Subcontractors send us dated applications and remittances, we strip out anything we cannot see both ends of, and we publish the median rather than the average so one catastrophic invoice cannot smear a decent firm. Fourteen contractors have asked to be removed since we started. The entry stays, with a line saying they asked.
Any firm can pay a valuation quickly and still sit on five per cent for three years. So we track what proportion of retention has actually reached the subcontractor twelve months after practical completion, which is the number that turned our friendliest entries hostile.
The only firms with money to spend on this page are the ones whose figures we publish, which makes advertising impossible to take honestly. We turned down £31,500 of it last year and run the index on subscriptions from quantity surveyors instead.
We have corrected nine records in three years, twice after a firm proved our sample was drawn from one bad contract rather than its normal trading. Those corrections sit on the entry permanently, next to the original figure, which is more embarrassing for us than quietly editing the page would be.
“We were owed £41,800 of retention on a school job and eleven months of asking had got me a shrug. I looked the main contractor up here, saw they were releasing about a third of retention across everyone, and priced the next two tenders with that in mind instead of hoping. I lost one and won the other at a number that survives them paying late.”
Add a firm or challenge a figure
Unit 6, Ravensworth Yard, Sweet Street
Leeds LS11 9UB
Leeds · independent since 2014
About this page
The business, the listings and the reviews are invented — this page exists to show what someone could put on buildingindustry.co.uk. The domain itself is genuinely for sale.
Or speak to Colin Squire directly — +44 (0)7990 570292 · colinsquire@yachtingmatters.com