Successful Debt recovery in the Construction Industry

If you’ve been involved in Credit Management and litigation for any length of time, you’ll know that construction debts can be ‘challenging’ to collect

Earlier in the 1^st quarter of this year, a plant hire company asked CPA to start the litigation process against a scaffolding company for over £7k, relating to invoices outstanding since July 2016! Our Litigation Manager, Ray White reported today that judgment was obtained and this week we have recovered the full debt amount, interest, legal fees, Late Payment Compensation and CPA’s charges. The total amount recovered is almost £10k!

As mentioned in earlier posts, make sure you have the correct legal identity of your debtor, that all orders are confirmed in writing and that the correct details are shown on the invoice. Keep all documents such as proof of delivery to support your claim. Then if payment is not forth coming, chase quickly and suspend the account if necessary to limit your exposure. Pass the matter to us as soon as possible as the quicker we act, the more likely we are to be successful.

We also successfully recovered an £18k debt last week that was owed to our member by one of the big UK construction companies. Our member had been chasing payment since 2016 but as a relatively small business, they were being given the run around, we were glad to be able to assist in the recovery of the entire debt.

An engineering company who have been members many years deals with many construction companies. It was especially good to see at the end of last week that had reported payment on four debts worth almost a quarter of a million pounds! £190k of that was owed by just one building company based in West London. The debt had been outstanding many months when we were instructed. From the date CPA were asked to acting on the debt to payment was just 16 days. We promise to try and speed that up next time. It’s a shame for CPA that we don’t charge commission on debts referred to our Overdue Account Recovery Service (available to members in the members area of our website) but our members appreciate this service which is included in their annual subscription. We at CPA are happy though to provide such a useful service.

On Friday, another construction company based in Cheshire paid the debt they owed to our member (a plant hire company). The invoice had been outstanding since 2016 but our final demand finally initiated payment. Another member recovered their debt owed by a construction company in Kent. The debt had been outstanding for many months again but after one letter from The Credit Protection Association Plc, payment flew in. Likewise one of members in the aggregate business was happy to report payment of their three month old invoice owed bya construction company in Preston, just two days after we started acting on the debt. And while I could go on, a builders merchant on the South Coast was happy to report payment on two debts they had passed to us just 9 days previous.

Are you owed money by builders? Do you have debts in the construction industry? The Credit Protection Association is here to help recover what you are owed.

James Salmon

12th June 2017