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Construction News Payment 100: Where Do Novus Rank?

On 14th January Construction News published its annual analysis on the payment practices within construction. So, how do Novus stack up against the rest of the industry?
Construction News Payment 100
The article entitled “CN Payment 100: how long do construction companies take to pay?” is centred around analysis from published data in accordance with the Government’s Prompt Payment Code (PPC).
This code “sets the gold standard in payment terms and plays an important role in bringing about a culture change in payment practices” (Prompt Payment Code Website) and was primarily introduced as a way of tackling the issue of late payments within construction.
At present, construction firms are required to settle 95% of their invoices within 60 days in order to comply with the code.
Construction News collates and analyses these data and ranks companies who are signed up to the PPC in league tables. League rankings are determined by the “average time taken to pay in days” and “percentage of payments within terms”.
Covid Disruption in 2020
The publication acknowledges the disruption that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the industry as a whole.
It cites the financial pressure associated with national lockdowns and reduced work volumes in the first half of 2020 as a potential source of deviation from ‘normal’ payment practices.
To illustrate the point, the data shows that “nearly a third of all payments” in the industry “breached agreed terms” and the median time to pay suppliers is 41 days.
Novus Numbers
For the Percentage of Payments Within Terms category, Novus has improved its ranking from 16th to 14th (out of 100).
Our percentage of invoices paid beyond agreed terms dropped from 12% to 9%, meaning that 91% of invoices coming into Novus are paid within agreed timescales with suppliers.
This actually represents the 7th best percentage in the industry.
The ranking for Average Number of Days Taken to Pay has dropped from 7th to 21st, with a modest increase from 29 to 33 days.
This is still the 9th lowest number of days taken to pay out of all construction firms on the list.
You can view an article detailing our previous results here.
Novus Finance Director Steve Oldroyd said:
“We are very proud of our payment record which, despite the significant disruption we faced in 2020, is well ahead of the Government’s guidance and compares very favourably with our peers.”
“Our supply chain is critical to our success, as a responsible and ethical business we remain committed to ensuring our supply partners are treated fairly and paid on time.”
If you are interested in reading the full Construction News article, it can be found at https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/financial/cn-payment-100-how-long-do-construction-companies-take-to-pay-14-01-2021/