Small Suppliers: Have Your Say in Consultation over Late Payments
Small businesses are being encouraged to give their input into a new process that is designed to speed up payments to them.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is currently consulting on the functions of a new Small Business Commissioner. The Commissioner was created under the Enterprise Act 2016 to give small businesses information about existing methods and access to a new resolution procedure to hold bigger business to account over late payments, without having to go to court.
The Act explains that businesses must have a headcount of fewer than 50 people to qualify. Specifically, BEIS is now consulting over how to define a 'small business', how complaints can be made to the Commissioner, how the Commissioner will deal with the complaints, and how the Commissioner will report on cases including whether to name and shame offenders.
The idea of the new resolution process is that the Commissioner will obtain representations from the large business once the small business has made the complaint, and the Commissioner will then make a determination. The determination will be non-binding but the aim is to encourage big business to comply. The complaint must be about payment rather than the amount of any fee or any matter that is otherwise in dispute.
Comment
Many businesses complain that bigger business take too long to pay. Businesses in that position who consider themselves to be small and that have difficulty getting paid on time should grab this opportunity with both hands to contribute and have their say over this new avenue for redress.