REFORM PAYMENT TO HELP SMALL HOUSE BUILDERS, SAYS (CROSS PARTY GROUP) REPORT

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  Posted by: electime      28th March 2018

The SEC Group has said it welcomes the report on small housebuilders and how best to support them from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for small and micro businesses.

It is clear that the “terrible payment practices” – systematic abuse of late payments and withholding cash retentions for long periods of time – create problems for small housebuilders and have to be dealt with as a matter of urgency, the SEC Group wrote.

SEC Groups support the APPG’s recommendations for strengthening enforcement of prompt payment regulations and for project bank accounts (PBAs) to be used in all public construction projects. We are particularly in favour of the suggestion by the APPG that the decision not to use PBAs should require a written ministerial statement.

The SEC Group added it is very encouraged that the APPG and small housebuilders have taken on board its call to reform the outdated practice of cash retentions by ring-fencing them in a separate bank account. MPs from all parties have declared their support for the Peter Aldous MP’s private Bill, which could provide the legislative framework for this. It hopes that the Government could also support it.

SEC Group’s CEO Rudi Klein said: “Government will need to put into action these clear and practical proposals in order to support small house building firms and their supply chains”.