FOI 2025/1278

Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000

Information on late payment

This is a request under FOIA for details of instances in which NHS Greater Manchester ICB (including, where applicable, any agencies, bodies, or units for which it is ultimately responsible for supplier payments) has failed to pay its suppliers on time, thereby causing liabilities for late payment compensation and/or interest on late payments to be incurred for the public purse.

As the Government has made clear, late payment remains a significant issue for business and a drag on the UK economy as a whole. It is clear that, despite what the law says, many suppliers have not received timely payment or the interest and compensation for late payment to which they are entitled by statute.

Public authorities must keep information on payment in order to comply with their legal obligations, and there is a public interest in ensuring both compliance and that unpaid interest and compensation is recovered from public authorities. If proper records are kept as they ought to be, then information in this respect ought readily to be available.

The information requested below is not confidential, and its disclosure under FOIA is not capable of adversely affecting any party’s commercial interests. This is because this request is aimed at data about late payment liabilities that have in fact arisen: the disclosure of this data cannot cause any additional liability to arise. We therefore do not anticipate any reasonable grounds for refusing this request.

In any event, there is strong public interest in transparency about these matters. Relevant factors in this respect include: enhancing public understanding and scrutiny of issues of significant importance to stewardship of the public purse and to economic growth; facilitating an informed debate about compliance by your authority with its contractual obligations and with Government policy; helping businesses that suffer from late payment (many of which are small and medium-sized enterprises), and encouraging improvements in payment practices by public authorities such as yours.

Request

With the above points in mind, we request under FOIA that you provide, (preferably in Microsoft Excel or an equivalent machine-readable format) the following information in respect of suppliers which were not paid in within 30 days for the period starting 1 April 2019 to the date of this request:

1. Supplier Name
2. Invoice Date
3. Gross Invoice Value
4. Payment Date
5. Late Payment Compensation or Interest Paid (if any)

Clarification:

We reiterate that this request:

(a)    is limited to information which should (if proper records are kept) be readily available from a purchase ledger system and should therefore be possible to retrieve without any difficulty and without imposing any significant burden;

(b)    relates to organisations (not individuals) who are entitled to be paid out of public funds for public services, and we do not require the disclosure of any personal information of any individual person;

(c)    does not require the disclosure of any confidential information or information to the production of which there could be any other lawful objection.

Compliance Assistance:

While we do not anticipate any grounds on which the requested information can lawfully be withheld, we nonetheless remind you of your duty under section 16 of FOIA to advise and assist requesters.

If you consider that it may be impracticable to provide all the requested information within the statutory timescales, then we shall be pleased to discuss with you the reasons for this, and to see what steps may reasonably be taken in order the address these.

For example, we would be content to receive the information in several parts, in another convenient format (such as that which you may already have), or to prioritise (such as by the provision of greater value items, or by date).

If there be any other steps which you think could reasonably assist in providing the information, or refining the request, then please let me know.

NHS Greater Manchester ICB (NHS GM) was formed on 1 July 2022 as the merger of 10 former NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups in Greater Manchester.

NHS GM and the predecessor CCGs publishes information in respect of its payment compliance performance, and the value of interest paid under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act within the Annual Report and Accounts of the organisation for each financial year.

This covers information in respect of question 5, as the value of the interest paid is disclosed in the Annual Report and Accounts. Since the formation of NHS GM, those reports are published on the NHS GM website at NHS Greater Manchester Reports | Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership including for NHS GM and the 2021-22 and 3 month period April 2022 – June 2022 for the ten predecessor CCGs. For prior periods of the ten predecessor CCGs, this information is available via the National Archives at Browse our A-Z list of archived websites and social media channels – UK Government Web Archive. As such, the information requested under question 5 is considered exempt under section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act, as the information is accessible to the applicant by other means.

Also, in respect of question 5, data in respect of the 2024/25 financial year for NHS GM is intended for future publication in the same location by the end of September 2025, and is therefore considered exempt under section 22.

Following careful consideration by NHS GM, the information requested under questions 1-4 is also considered exempt by NHS GM, as it is not in NHS GM’s commercial interests to provide details of individual invoices and suppliers who have been paid beyond the terms of the Public Contract Regulations. NHS GM considers there to be a risk that this data could be used to approach suppliers to inform them of their rights under the Later Payment of Commercial Debts Act and encourage them to take action against NHS GM. NHS GM considers that such companies will already be aware of their rights under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act and are able to approach the ICB under the Act if they so wish. The ICB is therefore exempting this information under Section 43 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

NHS GM considered that any liability for interest is only due on the basis of a supplier making a claim for late payment. As no claims have been made, no interest is considered due, and no interest has been paid to the suppliers. This information is published in the Annual Accounts of the ICB and the predecessor CCGs, as noted at the links above.

In order to be of assistance to your request however, NHS GM would like to inform the requestor that the ICB (and predecessor CCGs) does publish information about the expenditure it incurs on a monthly basis over £25,000 with individual suppliers. That information is published on the ICB website (in the Spending Reports section at the link above) and information for the legacy CCGs is available on their archived websites via the National Archives link above, which will enable the requestor to identify the suppliers who have been paid by NHS GM in the given months.