322 large UK companies said their contracts allow payment terms of more than 120 days, in answer to the question on the longest payment period in their contracts. 102 gave 180 days and 48 gave a full year.
Most of them pay much faster than that in practice. Their median time to pay was 47 days, against 31 for all 6,224 large companies reporting.
Companies that said their longest contractual term was 365 days included:
- Albert Farnell Limited
- Aldridge Education
- Brooks Macdonald Asset Management Limited
- C.E.M. Day Limited
- CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP
- Car Hire (Day of Swansea) Limited
- Cheyne Capital Management (UK) LLP
- Compton Care Group Limited
24 companies gave a longest term of more than a year. Some of those answers may be filing errors, so we do not name them here; the figures are on each company page as filed.
Since 2013 the law has said that payment terms longer than 60 days between businesses must be expressly agreed and must not be grossly unfair to the supplier. A supplier can claim interest and compensation on any invoice paid after its due date, and our late payment interest calculator works out how much.
About these figures
Figures are what each company filed on the government's Check payment practices service, as downloaded on 9 November 2026. Large companies and limited liability partnerships must report every six months under the Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance Regulations 2017. Unless stated, each company's latest report is used, counting only periods that ended on or after 10 May 2025, and reports with figures that cannot be right are left out. Companies whose latest figures look inconsistent with their earlier filings, such as an average more than double their previous report, are not named in our stories; they stay in the tables with a note. How we use the data.
Source: Check payment practices, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.