Research
How fast UK construction companies pay their suppliers: specialist contractors against main contractors (2026)
Large specialist contractors took a median 39 days to pay their suppliers, against 32 for main contractors and 31 for all reporters in every industry. They paid a median 42% of invoices within 30 days, against 58% for main contractors.
These are the companies’ own reports to the government for periods ending 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026, matched to the Companies House register for their trade. The figures are self-reported and unaudited.
By Oliver Stocks-Fryer, founder of VariationFlow · Published · LinkedIn
- median average time to pay, large specialist contractors
- 39 days
- median average time to pay, main contractors
- 32 days
- median share of invoices paid within 30 days, specialists against main contractors
- 42% against 58%
Payment practices reports for periods ending 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026
Payment times by tier
Each figure is the median across companies, with its 95% interval beneath. A company’s average time to pay runs from receipt of the invoice, and an invoice not paid within agreed terms is late against that payer’s own terms, which differ from company to company.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Group | Companies | Average days to pay | Invoices not paid within agreed terms | Invoices paid within 30 days | Invoices paid after 60 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large specialist contractors | 154 | 39 days36 to 40.5 | 15%11 to 19 | 42%35.5 to 48.5 | 9.5%5.5 to 13 |
| Main contractors | 223 | 32 days31 to 33 | 11%10 to 14 | 58%53 to 63 | 4%4 to 5 |
| All reporters, every industry | 6,026 | 31 days31 to 32 | 15%14 to 16 | 64%63 to 65 | 5%5 to 5 |
- Main contractors carry any of the SIC codes 41201, 41202, 42110, 42120, 42130 or 42990 on the register.
- Large specialist contractors carry construction codes only from the census’s subcontractor trades: every code in group 43, and 42210, 42220 and 42910. Only large companies and LLPs have to report, so every company here is large.
- All reporters is every company with a usable report, in any industry. 55 reporters with other construction codes, such as property development alone, are in neither tier.
Retentions: what main contractors report
The latest version of the report also asks about retention clauses in construction contracts. Of the 200 main contractors that declared qualifying construction contracts, 166 use retention clauses. 73 of those state a standard retention rate: 49 at 5% and 24 at 3%. The median value of retentions they report is 2% of their total payments in the period, across 166 reports.
Build UK has published a retentions benchmark for its tier-one contractor members (a report of Build UK’s benchmark, 12 August 2026). This page covers the specialist tier as well, which that benchmark does not.
What these figures are, and are not
- Self-reported and unaudited. Each figure is what a company published about itself. Nobody checks it against the company’s ledger.
- Entity by entity. Each company in a group reports for itself, so a group with several large companies appears several times, and a group company too small to report does not appear at all.
- The trade is the company’s own. The SIC codes are the ones the reporting company gives itself on the register, which may not describe the business of the group it belongs to.
- Late is against each payer’s own terms. The same payment can be on time for one company and late for another, because each sets its own terms.
Method
- Source. The payment practices export of 13 October 2026 (file 2026-10-13-2214-prompt-payments.csv), 115,465 reports.
- One report per company. Each company’s latest report with a period ending 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026: 6,475 companies. 449 whose report says they made no payments in the period are left out.
- The register. Joined to the Companies House register of 1 October 2026 by company number: 6,461 of the 6,475 matched. Those not found count among all reporters and in no tier.
- Medians and intervals. The median of the companies’ own figures, each company counting once. The 95% intervals are percentile bootstrap intervals from 10,000 resamples with a fixed seed.
- Definitions. As in the Department for Business and Trade’s Duty to report: guidance to reporting on payment practices and performance (updated 2 September 2025).
Licence and how to cite this page
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Cite this page as:
Oliver Stocks-Fryer, VariationFlow (2026). How fast UK construction companies pay their suppliers: specialist contractors against main contractors (2026). Payment practices reports, export of 13 October 2026, and Companies House register, snapshot of 1 October 2026. Published 13 October 2026. https://www.variationflow.com/research/specialist-contractor-payment-times-2026
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