Praise For Highways Agency

For Adopting Project Bank Accounts.

The Highways Agency has now become the lead public sector exemplar of best payment practices.

The Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group has written to Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport, to congratulate him and the Agency for the impressive work done by the Agency in improving payment performance along the construction supply chain.

By 2020 almost £20 billion of Agency construction will have been paid through project bank accounts; this ensures that all payments are routed directly to firms in the supply chain.

As a result tier 3 contractors are being paid within 14 days of the due payment dates in their tier 1 contracts.

SEC Group’s CEO, Professor Rudi Klein said: “If the Highways Agency can achieve this, why can’t every public sector body achieve the same?

“The Agency’s achievements are in stark contrast to the picture painted by the National Audit Office in January this year, which concluded that government departments had made little progress in improving payment performance in the supply chain.”