For Groundworks and civils · England and Wales
Late payment is not a problem on your book. It is the operating model.
You are not owed one invoice. You are owed forty, all at different stages, on a book big enough that nobody has time to chase the small ones, which is precisely why the small ones never get paid.
What we do about it
We chase every overdue invoice in your name, add the interest the law already says you are owed, and escalate through a regulated firm when somebody takes the mick.
Or one debt as a 60-day trial, with nothing charged unless we get it back.
The one that actually stops you
You already know which invoice this is about.
Applications for payment, valued down, paid late, and the shortfall never explained. Plus retention across a dozen jobs that nobody has released and nobody will until somebody asks. The individual sums look small enough to ignore. Added up, they are usually the reason you are financing the next job out of your own account.
Where you stand
You are probably covered by the Construction Act
Not legal advice
Most commercial construction work in England and Wales falls under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. It exists because Parliament decided cash flow down the supply chain mattered enough to legislate for, and it gives you rights your contract cannot take away.
- If nobody served a valid pay less notice by the final date for payment, the notified sum is payable. Not arguable, payable.
- Pay-when-paid clauses are outlawed. Being told the client has not paid the main contractor is not a reason you do not get paid.
- You can refer a dispute to adjudication at any time, and a decision normally follows within 28 days.
- Where a notified sum has not been paid, you have a right to suspend performance, on notice.
We are not solicitors and this is not legal advice. Hound is credit control: we chase, we add the statutory interest and compensation the law already gives you, and we assemble the evidence. Anything that needs a letter before action, a claim or an adjudication goes to a regulated firm, on your instruction, and only after you approve it.
The bit almost nobody claims
A £6,000 invoice at 68 days is really £6,201.34.
Statutory interest runs at 11.75% a year on a commercial debt, plus fixed compensation per invoice, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. On that invoice it is £201.34 on top, and it is yours, not ours. Most trades never claim a penny of it, because claiming it means writing the letter that says so and then meaning it.
How we chase for groundworks and civils
Same machine. Not the same letter.
Volume is the point here. We chase every overdue account on the book at once, not the three somebody remembered, and we consolidate: one debtor with five overdue applications gets a single statement-style chase, never five separate emails. Statutory interest and fixed compensation are added to every commercial debt from the start, and that money is yours.
Start
Hand us the worst one and see what happens.
Nothing is charged unless we get it back. If we have recovered nothing by day 60 we cancel it ourselves and you are charged nothing at all.