What can I do if payment is late?

Start by fixing what was actually due: the Notified Sum, the amount the Payment Notice fixed, or your application where none was served, and confirm the Final Date For Payment has passed with no valid Pay Less Notice reducing it. That position decides everything else. From there the routes escalate. A short formal letter demanding the debt and stating the consequences often moves money on its own. The late payment legislation adds interest, at 8 per cent over base where the contract has no substantial remedy of its own, plus a fixed sum towards recovery costs. The Construction Act right to suspend some or all of the work opens after written notice of at least 7 days stating the ground. And adjudication, the industry's fast statutory dispute process, turns an unanswered notice position into an enforceable decision in weeks; where the payer's notices were missed, a smash and grab adjudication enforces the Notified Sum without arguing the value at all. Chasing politely for months, by contrast, has no legal effect: the rights all run from dates and documents, so the paper position is the leverage.

Picture a steel fabricator owed £62,000, three weeks past the final date, no Pay Less Notice served. It writes one letter: the Notified Sum is £62,000, the final date has passed, no Pay Less Notice arrived, and unless payment lands within 7 days it will suspend fabrication and refer the debt to adjudication, with statutory interest and the fixed recovery sum added. That letter reads differently from a chasing email because every sentence is a right the payer's own silence has handed over. Most debts of that shape get paid before the 7 days run out, and the ones that do not tend to end in a smash and grab the payer cannot defend. The lesson is to escalate on the paper position, not on patience.