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Building Trade Associations and Institutes
News Release from: The Forum of Private Business
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 25 July 2006
Evidence of retailers with poor payment
practice
The Forum of Private Business (FPB) is set to send more detailed evidence of retailers with poor payment practice to the Minister responsible for Small Firms, Margaret Hodge.
The Forum of Private Business (FPB) is set to send more detailed evidence of retailers with poor payment practice to the Minister responsible for Small Firms, Margaret Hodge The FPB is campaigning on behalf of suppliers of big retailers and will give a detailed dossier on the current payment dispute at Matalan to the Department of Trade and Industry
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 7 Aug 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Chief Executive of the FPB Nick Goulding said he has reassurances that the detailed evidence will be carefully considered.
"We received specific assurances from the Minister that the identity of individual suppliers would be kept strictly confidential.
I hope now that, with this commitment, the evidence we will be able to give the department will be sufficient for the minister to intervene personally." The dossier will be compiled after Margaret Hodge agreed to look into specific cases at a meeting with the FPB on Monday.
Mr Goulding said he was pleased to have had the assurances from the Minister on this issue and on her wider commitment to small firms.
"We have run a high profile campaign calling for the Minister to stand up and be recognised as responsible for small firms.
Following our meeting and the assurances she has given, we hope that she will make the growing problem of poor payment practice a priority." As well as their appeal to Margaret Hodge, the FPB, which represents around 25,000 small and medium-sized businesses in the UK, wants the Government to make it compulsory for firms to specify adequate financial compensation for long payment periods in excess of the 30 day period specified in late payment legislation.
"This is a question of transparency, businesses would be able to continue to freely contract whatever payment terms they liked, but where the terms exceeded the 30 day norm the contract would have to make clear the specific compensation," said Mr Goulding.
"The purpose of such a change would be to prevent big retailers and others from abusing their market power to impose unfair contacts, and to sidestep their obligations under late payment legislation," he added.
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