Questions about selling your claim

We buy the statutory interest and compensation rights arising under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, in relation to invoices that were paid late by a public sector body but were already settled in full at the date of assignment.

These rights are separate from the underlying trade debt. We are not purchasing any unpaid invoices, and we do not acquire any rights in respect of future invoices. The right is time-limited under statutory limitation periods, so it has to be claimed within the window or it expires permanently.

Yes. Statutory late payment claims are subject to limitation periods, generally six years in England and Wales and five years in Scotland. The clock runs from the date each invoice became overdue, not from the date you contact us.

If claims are not pursued within the relevant timeframe, they expire and the entitlement is lost. This is why our offers include an expiry date.

We make an offer based on our assessment of the recoverability of the claim. That takes into account a range of factors including the age of the claims, the sector you operate in, the number of public bodies involved, and the number of late-paid invoices.

Our claim calculator on latepaymentaction.com provides an indicative figure before you contact us.

We can make an offer based purely on our own data without any documentation from you — a "rights-only" offer. Or we can make a higher offer where you supply supporting documentation such as a sales ledger transaction history and copies of invoices — a "rights-and-information" offer.

Documentation strengthens the claim and makes recovery more efficient, which is reflected in the higher price. If you have records and are happy to share them, you'll receive more. If you don't, or prefer not to, we can still proceed.

Our minimum purchase price is £250 + VAT. Use our free claim calculator to get an indication of whether your claim is likely to meet this threshold before you contact us.

The payment we make is consideration for the assignment of statutory rights. The tax and accounting treatment will depend on the specific circumstances of your business.

For most businesses, it is a matter of days. We typically come back with an initial assessment within a working day of receiving your details. If you decide to proceed, we send the assignment documents for signature and pay within 24 hours of receiving them back together with your bank details.

The assignment is a short legal document that transfers your statutory right to pursue interest and compensation on identified historic late-paid invoices over to us. It does not transfer any other rights — your underlying trade relationship is unaffected, and any unpaid invoices remain with you.

Once signed, we own the statutory rights and pursue them in our own name. We are happy to share an example of the assignment document on request before you sign anything.

That is entirely your decision. The assignment document is short and straightforward, and we are happy to talk you through it before signing. Many businesses proceed without seeking advice, but if you would like your solicitor to review it first, we have no issue with that.

There is no cost to you for assessing whether you have a claim. If our analysis shows you do not have a claim, or that the claim falls below our minimum purchase price, we will tell you so and there is nothing more to it.

You only commit when you sign the assignment, and at that point the price is fixed and the payment guaranteed.

No. We regularly buy claims from businesses that are still actively supplying the same public sector clients. The assignment covers historic invoices already paid in full. The claims relate to late payment, and as such, we contact the finance and legal teams — not your operational or contract contacts.

We notify the finance and/or legal teams that you have assigned the rights to us and that we now own them. We do not notify operational or contract contacts, and so the people you work with (or have worked with) are unlikely to be drawn into the process. Your involvement ends at the point of assignment.

In the unlikely event a public body raises the matter with you, you can confirm that you no longer hold any interest in the claim, have no control over how it is pursued, and the matter should be directed to us.

Yes. Our offer covers all of the public sector bodies you have supplied and from which you have experienced late payment, with a single combined purchase price.

If there are specific bodies you would prefer we did not pursue — for example, where you have a sensitive ongoing relationship — we can carve those out and adjust the offer to reflect the exclusion. Tell us upfront and we will factor it in.

That said, we do not liaise with your operational or contract contacts concerning the claim, and as such the claims ought not to cause any interference with ongoing relationships, sensitive or otherwise.

That becomes our problem, not yours. Once you have signed the assignment and been paid, any dispute or negotiation with the public body is handled entirely by us.

The risk transfers with the rights — your payment is not contingent on any outcome of that engagement.

That is fine. We can make a rights-only offer based on publicly available payment data, without any records from you. If you do have invoice records and want to share them, we will make a higher offer. The choice is yours.

If you've already received interest or compensation on a particular invoice, that invoice falls outside what we'd pursue. We factor that into our offer and price based on the remaining invoices. Tell us what you've already done — we'll handle the rest.

Ordinarily, yes. The right to interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 is a statutory right, not a contractual term you negotiated. Once it has accrued — when an invoice is paid late — it generally becomes part of your assignable assets, even where your contract contains restrictions on assignment. For UK SMEs in contracts dated 31 December 2018 onwards, the Business Contract Terms (Assignment of Receivables) Regulations 2018 also override most anti-assignment provisions. In the unlikely event a restriction applies that we can't work around, that becomes our problem to resolve, not yours — you've already been paid at the point of assignment.