https://www.noxia.co.uk/field-notes/thirty-days-is-already-in-the-contract · printed from noxia.co.uk · sources checked 23 September 2026
Field note · What we found
Thirty days is already in the contract. You did not negotiate it.
Small suppliers to the public sector often negotiate hard on price and not at all on payment, because they assume the terms are fixed. On payment they are — and the fixed term is better than most of them ask for.
- What we found
- Procurement
- Cash flow
- Small firms
- Public sector
The short answer
Section 68 of the Procurement Act 2023 implies into public contracts a term that payment is made within 30 days beginning with the day the invoice is received, or the day payment falls due under the invoice if later. It does not apply where the authority considers the invoice invalid or disputes it — but section 68(4) requires the authority to notify the payee without undue delay in either case. Concession contracts, private utilities contracts and school contracts are outside it.
On this page · 5 sections
The mechanism is narrow and precise, and the part suppliers under-use is the notification duty rather than the deadline.
Why the notification duty is the one to use
The common failure is not an authority refusing to pay. It is an invoice sitting somewhere unpaid while the supplier assumes it is in a queue, and only finds out at day 50 that a purchase order number was missing on day two.
Section 68(4) puts that the other way round. If they consider it invalid, or dispute it, they must tell you, without undue delay. So silence past a reasonable interval is itself information: either the invoice is fine and the clock is running, or somebody has not done what the Act requires.
Which makes the practical move a small one: a standing check that flags any public-sector invoice at, say, day 12 with no payment and no notification. That is a scheduled query against data you already have, not a project.
The part that points back at you
The same regime that protects you as a supplier tests you as a payer. Suppliers bidding for public work are expected to demonstrate their own payment performance — an average of 45 days and 95% of invoices paid within 60 days are the figures in circulation as the qualifying standard.
That is the reciprocal nobody expects. A firm that wins public work on price while paying its own subcontractors at 75 days has a problem that shows up at the next bid, not at the next audit.
What this does not tell you
It is the implied term, not the whole payment regime. It does not cover the notified sums and pay-less notices of the construction payment legislation, which operate separately and to their own timetable on construction contracts.
Section 68(3) removes the deadline for invoices the authority considers invalid or disputes, and what counts as either is a question about your invoice and their process rather than one this note can answer. A disputed invoice is not an unpaid one by definition, and the remedy for a bad-faith dispute is contractual, not in section 68.
We are not lawyers. The statutory wording is linked below, it is short, and reading section 68 itself takes about two minutes — which is a better use of them than reading us. The chasing note is the same problem without the statute, and the chasing pipeline is what a day-12 check actually looks like.
Questions people actually ask
How long does a public authority have to pay an invoice?
Thirty days. Section 68(2) of the Procurement Act 2023 implies into public contracts a term that payment is made before the end of the period of 30 days beginning with the day the invoice is received, or if later, the day payment falls due in accordance with the invoice.
What happens if an authority disputes the invoice?
The 30-day implied term does not apply to an invoice the authority considers invalid or disputes. But section 68(4) requires the authority to notify the supplier without undue delay in either case, so an unexplained silence means either the clock is running or that duty has not been met.
Which contracts are outside section 68?
Concession contracts, utilities contracts awarded by private utilities, and contracts awarded by schools are excluded by section 68(1). The implied term applies to public contracts other than those.
Do suppliers have to prove their own payment performance to bid?
Payment performance is part of the qualification picture for public sector bidders, with an average of 45 days and 95% of invoices paid within 60 days reported as the standard. A firm that wins public work while paying its own subcontractors slowly meets that as an obstacle at the next bid.
Sources
- Procurement Act 2023, section 68 (terms implied into public contracts), legislation.gov.uk, read 23 September 2026. s.68(2): payment “before the end of the period of 30 days beginning with — (a) the day on which an invoice is received by the contracting authority in respect of the sum, or (b) if later, the day on which the payment falls due in accordance with the invoice.” s.68(3): the term “does not apply if the contracting authority — (a) considers the invoice invalid, or (b) disputes the invoice.” s.68(4): the authority “must notify the payee without undue delay” in either case. s.68(1) excludes concession contracts, utilities contracts awarded by private utilities, and contracts awarded by schools. legislation.gov.uk ↗ — primary; the statute itself
- Charles Russell Speechlys, “Payment Practices — the latest developments on reporting and late payments”, read 23 September 2026: notes the Procurement Act 2023 requirement for public sector suppliers to achieve a 45-day average payment time and 95% of payments within 60 days, and a proposed 60-day maximum payment cap. charlesrussellspeechlys.com ↗ — secondary; a law firm’s summary. We have reported the 45-day and 95% figures as the reported standard rather than as statute, because we have not verified them against the underlying procurement policy note re-checked every 6 months
- This covers the implied term only. The notified sums and pay-less notice regime that applies to construction contracts operates separately and is not addressed here. We are not lawyers. — a stated limit on the coverage above
Checked 23 September 2026. Next scheduled check 22 March 2027. Numbers that move — leaderboards, live indices — are re-checked every 30 days; annual datasets and rules in force every six months; dated research once a year. If something here has gone stale before we got to it, tell us and we will correct it and say what changed.
Cite this note
Noxia, “Thirty days is already in the contract. You did not negotiate it”, Field notes, 23 September 2026; sources checked 23 September 2026. https://www.noxia.co.uk/field-notes/thirty-days-is-already-in-the-contract
A day-12 check is a scheduled query, not a project.
Any public-sector invoice at day 12 with no payment and no notification is a phone call worth making, and finding them is a job for a pipeline rather than a person with a spreadsheet. We build the check, the list and the message — against the data you already hold.
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