UK Late-Payment Index 2026
Edition 1, June 2026. A dated edition, not a live feed: we update it by hand when the underlying sources publish new readings. Every figure links to its primary source.
UK businesses are owed an estimated £26bn in late payments at any one time, late payments cost the economy around £11bn a year, and roughly 14,000 firms close annually as a result. The UK Late-Payment Index tracks these indicators each reporting cycle alongside MarketInvoice's own count of new invoice finance facilities, a leading signal of cash-flow pressure.
£26bn is owed to UK businesses in late payments at any one time. Source: Small Business Commissioner
Headline indicators
is owed to UK businesses in late payments at any one time. (2025) Source: Small Business Commissioner
is the estimated annual cost of late payments to the UK economy. (2025) Source: Small Business Commissioner
UK businesses close each year because of late payments, around 38 a day. (2025) Source: Small Business Commissioner
is the average value of overdue invoices owed to a small business at any one time. (2025) Source: Small Business Commissioner
of small firms reported being paid late in the last three months. (2025) Source: FSB Late Payments Report 2025
is the average payment delay experienced by UK businesses. (2025) Source: gov.uk late payments research
in SME cashflow could be unlocked by ending late payments, Sage estimated. (2025) Source: Sage
new invoice finance debentures were registered at Companies House across 37 UK lenders, our first-party signal of new facility demand (full register count by registration date; corrected 22 October 2026). First-party data (June 2026) Source: MarketInvoice, Companies House charges stream
From MarketInvoice: the first-party signal
New invoice finance debentures registered at Companies House are a recognised proxy for new facility volume, the same basis the industry uses to size lender activity. We count them first-party from the Companies House charges stream under the Open Government Licence, broken down by lender in the UK Invoice Finance Market Activity tracker. Because businesses turn to invoice finance when customers pay late, this count is a leading indicator that sits inside the same index as the late-payment figures above.
Methodology
The UK Late-Payment Index is a dated compilation published as numbered editions. We update it by hand, not on a fixed schedule. Each edition pulls the latest reading for each indicator from its primary source (the Small Business Commissioner late-payment research, the FSB Late Payments Report, and the gov.uk Payment Practices Reporting service), and adds MarketInvoice's first-party count of new invoice finance debentures from the Companies House charges stream.
We do not republish figures from secondary blogs, we link to the original record for each one, and we keep the method fixed between editions so the readings are comparable. Figures are checked when a new edition is published and the edition date reflects the most recent substantive update.
Download the data
The full indicator table for this edition is available as a CSV under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence:
UK Late-Payment Index, June 2026 (CSV) Always the newest: uk-late-payment-index-latest.csv
Cite this index
To reference these figures, please credit MarketInvoice and link to this page:
Source: MarketInvoice, UK Late-Payment Index (Edition 1, June 2026), https://marketinvoice.co.uk/research/uk-late-payment-index/ (accessed June 2026).
Related: UK Late Payment Statistics 2026, the UK Days to Pay by Sector league table, and the UK Invoice Finance Market Activity tracker.
Correction, 22 October 2026
The first-party figure in this edition was first published as 14 new invoice finance debentures across 7 lenders for June 2026. That count came from an early stream-only capture that only saw events after it started. The full register count for June 2026, by Companies House registration date, is 529 across 37 lenders, as shown above and on the market activity tracker. Later the same day the lender list behind the count was rebuilt from our lender classification (two chargees reclassified as not invoice finance, several lenders added, every spelling merged under one name), which moved the June figure from a first corrected 572 to 529; the list and the merges are published on the market activity page. The archived CSV deposited with the DOI still carries the original figure until a corrected version is deposited.
Founder & Managing Director, Muswell Rose, founder and PSC of Best Business Loans Ltd
Adam was managing director of Penny, a UK invoice finance business, from July 2020 to November 2023. His career runs through insurance, mortgages, commercial finance and fintech lending. He writes the Market Invoice library. Career record.
Published · Last updated