UK late payers: Procurement Act payments compliance, contract performance and terminations (internal one-pager)

Private Actor behind the £149 / £499 a month feed. Not on the Store. It reads the UK Find a Tender service's two open APIs and returns one clean row per Procurement Act 2023 notice. The headline is which public bodies pay their suppliers late: every payments compliance notice, with the change since the authority's previous report. It also returns contract performance ratings and contract terminations, with the contract and supplier named, and stable keys for every authority and supplier.

Late payers (payments compliance notices, UK17)

Under the Procurement Act 2023 (s.69), a contracting authority publishes a payments compliance notice for each six-month reporting period, within 30 days of the period's end. It says how quickly the authority paid its suppliers' invoices.

Question	Fields
How much does this authority pay within 30 days?	paidWithin30DaysPct (of payments made, counted from the invoice day)
How late is the rest?	paid31To60DaysPct, paid61PlusDaysPct, paidAfter30DaysPct (the two added up)
How long does it take on average?	averageDaysToPay
How much that was due wasn't paid at all?	duePaymentsNotMadePct (includes invalid or disputed invoices)
What does the statutory measure say?	paidOnTermsPct (paid within the 30-day term of s.68(2)); see the caveat below
Is it getting better or worse?	paymentTrend, paidWithin30DaysChange (points), averageDaysToPayChange (days), paidOnTermsChange, previousNoticeId, previousPeriodStart/End, previousPaidWithin30DaysPct, previousAverageDaysToPay
Which period, and which contracts?	paymentPeriodStart, paymentPeriodEnd, contractsCovered (Find a Tender's own words: all contracts, or Procurement Act contracts only)
Who is the authority?	authorityName, authorityNameAsPublished, authorityType, authorityId, authorityIdentifiers, authorityKey
Is this a correction?	correctsNoticeId (the notice it replaces)
Where is the official notice?	noticeUrl, noticeId

Coverage (read 2026-10-14). Find a Tender has published 714 payments compliance notices, from 620 authorities, between 8 April and 13 October 2026. 39 of them were later corrected, so there are 675 current reports. By period: October 2025 to March 2026, 554; January to March 2026, 110; April to September 2026, 50 so far. Most notices arrive just after a period ends: 482 came in April 2026. The April to September 2026 reports are due by about 30 October 2026, so expect several hundred more in the next two weeks. The Actor reads every notice Find a Tender holds on every run (8 requests today), so nothing is missed. Scottish devolved authorities follow their own procurement rules and are not in this data.

Worst payers view. The dataset's worstPayers view lists payments compliance notices ranked by paidWithin30DaysPct, lowest first (ties: the slower average first). Reports without that figure (the short form, below) come next, then empty reports. Apify views cannot sort, so the Actor stores rows in this order: payments compliance rows first, then the other notice types, newest first. A run's maxResults cap therefore keeps the worst payers.

Change since the previous report. For each report, the Actor finds the same authority's most recent earlier reporting period: one that ended before this one began. If two end on the same day, it takes the later notice. "Same authority" means the same key or any shared identifier (PPON, Companies House, NHS, charity …). paymentTrend is judged on the first figure both reports publish: % paid within 30 days, then average days (fewer is better), then the on-terms figure. A change of less than 1 point (or 1 day) is unchanged. Today 41 of the 675 current reports have an earlier period to compare with: 14 worse, 9 better, 18 unchanged. Most authorities have reported only once so far, so the April to September reports will add a comparison for most of them.

Things to know about the figures.

• Short form. 37 current reports publish only the on-terms and unpaid figures (one adds an average of 0 days), with no breakdown by days. Their paidWithin30DaysPct is null, so they are listed after the ranked reports.
• Empty reports. 26 current reports publish only zeros. That usually means nothing fell due under the contracts covered. They are flagged emptyReport: true and are never ranked as worst payers or compared.
• The on-terms figure (s.68(2)) is unreliable. 8 notices give 0% paid on terms while their own day counts show invoices paid within 30 days (up to 100%). So the ranking uses paidWithin30DaysPct, not paidOnTermsPct.
• Corrections. Only the latest version of a report is returned. A notice that a later notice corrects is never output or charged, and the correction carries correctsNoticeId. A correction can change the figures a lot: one housing trust's October to March report went from 100% within 30 days to 0% across two corrections.
• Names that are notice titles. One publisher typed its notice title into its name ("WM Trains Payment Notice April - Sept 2026"). When a name ends in such a title (payment, compliance, notice or report words with a period or year), the Actor uses the name the same authority publishes on its other notices ("WM TRAINS LIMITED"). If it has none, the Actor cuts the title off. The original is always in authorityNameAsPublished. Ordinary names that merely contain those words ("Rural Payments Agency", "The Financial Reporting Council Limited") are left alone. In the full history this caught 1 of 714 notices; in 90 days of other notices, none of 24,548 organisation names.
• Not included. The authority's free-text narrative and the name of the officer who approved the report. Both are on the official notice (noticeUrl).

Contract performance (UK9) and contract terminations (UK11)

Question	Fields
Which incumbents are scoring badly before a re-tender?	worstRating, kpisBelowTarget, kpiSummary, underperformanceReasons, kpis[], supplierNames, contractEnd, contractMaxEnd
Which contracts ended, how, and what did they cost?	terminationReason, terminationDate, terminationNotes, finalValue, finalValueGross, supplierNames, contractTitle
Was a supplier thrown off a contract?	suppliersRemoved, suppliersRemovedKeys (performance notices); terminationReason: breachOfContract (terminations)
Which contract is it, how big, and when does it end?	contractTitle, contractId, contractValue (ex VAT), contractValueGross, currency, contractStart, contractEnd, contractMaxEnd (with every extension)
Who is the supplier, unambiguously?	supplierNames, supplierCompaniesHouseNumbers, supplierIds, supplierKeys
Over what period was performance judged?	performancePeriodStart, performancePeriodEnd, kpis[].periodStart/End
Is a KPI not rated yet, and why?	kpisNotRated, kpis[].notes
Where did the contract and supplier come from?	joinedFromEarlierNotice (true = from the contract details or award notice of the same procurement)
Where is the official notice?	noticeUrl, noticeId, ocid (one procurement across all its notices)

Ratings (kpis[].rating, worstRating), best to worst: met = good, meeting or exceeding the KPI; slightlyBelow = approaching target; below = requires improvement; then "inadequate" (on Find a Tender's scale, not yet used by any live notice). other = the authority says it can't be rated yet, and kpis[].notes says why: it is counted in kpisNotRated, never as a failure. kpisBelowTarget counts approaching, requires improvement and inadequate. underperformanceReasons gives the authority's own explanation for each below-target KPI: its note, or the measure when the authority wrote the explanation there (they do, for "requires improvement").

What 90 days of live data looks like (15 Jul – 13 Oct 2026): 27 performance notices, 96 KPI ratings: 71 met, 8 approaching target, 3 requires improvement, 14 not rated. One notice rated no KPIs and instead reported a supplier removed from a framework. All 27 named their contract and supplier through the join described below. By month: Jul (from the 15th) 2, Aug 6, Sep 15, Oct (to the 13th) 4. That is low but growing; more Procurement Act contracts reaching their first KPI assessment should keep it growing (our inference, not a measured trend).

Terminations in the same 90 days: 180 notices covering 199 contracts. Reasons per contract: contract completed 141, other 43, mutually agreed 14, breach of contract 3. About two a day, so bid teams can watch for incumbents leaving early. terminationReason lists every reason on the notice (;-separated). terminationNotes holds the authority's explanation (often "a duplicate notice" for other) and, for a breach, what went wrong. All 8 terminations in the test set named their contract and supplier through the join. A breach notice also names the supplier itself, which is the fallback when the join finds nothing.

Keys for pivoting (the £499 tier). authorityKey and supplierKeys are GB-COH-<Companies House number> when the organisation has one, otherwise the identifier Find a Tender gives it (usually GB-PPON-…, the Central Digital Platform id), otherwise name:<normalised name>. Names are normalised for case, punctuation, "&"/"and", a leading "The" and legal suffixes ("Ltd", "Limited", "PLC", "LLP" …). Within a run, a name-only organisation takes the key of the one identified organisation with the same normalised name, and stays name:… if two share it. Two more rules make one company one key. First, every identifier published together on a party (Companies House number plus PPON) is remembered, so a later notice that gives only the PPON resolves to the Companies House key. That memory is kept between runs in the task's own store. So a supplier's key can change once, from its PPON to its Companies House key, the first time a notice links the two; after that it stays put. A 7-day run sees fewer links than a 90-day one: in the live test, one supplier kept its PPON key in a 7-day run and got its Companies House key in the 90-day run. Second, a PPON-only organisation whose exact normalised name belongs to one Companies House (or other register) key in the run takes that key. Companies House refuses a new company name that is the "same as" an existing one (ignoring legal suffixes, punctuation and similar noise, much like our folding), so this is strong evidence. Payments compliance notices take part too: an authority's key is the same in its payments, performance and termination rows. Of the 675 current payments reports, 157 authorities are keyed by Companies House, 66 by NHS code, 51 by another register (charity, housing, education) and 401 by PPON.

Accuracy, spot-checked 2026-10-13 on 50 rows (27 performance + 23 contract notices) and the 104 authority and supplier keys in them, against every name and identifier published under each key across 90 days (about 14,500 notices): 103 of 104 keys correct (99%); 49 of 50 rows fully correct. The miss was an NHS trust registered twice on the platform under two PPONs, with no Companies House number to link them. No false merges. Shared keys behind renames were checked too (e.g. Crown Commercial Service → Government Commercial Agency, one PPON). Across all 90 days, distinct normalised names with more than one key fell from 2,791 to 92 with the two rules above. This was checked against what the notices publish, not against the Companies House register itself.

What is NOT in the feed (and why)

• Individual payments over £30,000 (s.70): not in either API. No notice code or field for them appears in any release checked.
• People. No contact names, emails or phone numbers, no approving officers, and no free-text narrative from payments compliance notices. A supplier that looks like a private individual (a sole trader trading under their own name) is removed from the row. Organisations only.

Inputs

Input	Default	Notes
noticeTypes	payments-compliance, contract-performance, contract-termination	Also contract-details (UK7) and contract-award (UK6), opt-in. Find a Tender codes (UK17, UK9, UK11 …) work too
daysBack	7	1–365, by publication date. Above 365 is reduced to 365
authorities	(all)	Name or identifier contains any entry as whole words ("Mace" never matches "Pharmaceuticals"); case, punctuation and Ltd/Limited ignored
suppliers	(all)	Supplier name, identifier or Companies House number contains any entry as whole words. Rows without a named supplier (every payments compliance notice) never match
onlyNew	false	Only notices this saved task hasn't returned before. The feed task turns it on
maxResults	5000	0 = no limit

Bad input ends the run SUCCEEDED with a message that says what to fix, and charges nothing. If Find a Tender is down, the run also ends SUCCEEDED, with a message that names the source that failed (its notice feed, its payments compliance API, or both). When one source fails and the other works, the run returns what the working source gave and says which notice types are missing. If a source fails part-way, the notices read before the failure are returned and the message says so.

Update cadence and run time

Payments compliance notices come in two waves a year, mostly in the 30 days after 31 March and 30 September; a few arrive at other times (corrections, late filers). Other notices are published continuously. The feed task runs weekly with daysBack 14 and onlyNew on, so a missed week is caught up and nothing is sent twice. A correction is a new notice, so onlyNew sends it even when the original went out before.

Payments compliance alone takes under a minute (8 requests). The other types come from Find a Tender's full notice feed, which it throttles to about 20 requests per three minutes (HTTP 429 with a two-minute Retry-After; slower pacing does not avoid it). A 7-day run reads about 25 feed pages plus one look-up per performance or termination notice whose contract is older than the window (almost all of them): allow 5–10 minutes. A 90-day feed read took about 45 minutes (301 pages); 365 days is about 1,200 pages, roughly 3 hours, so give long runs a long timeout. A run that reaches its time limit stops reading, returns what it has, and says so.

Pricing

One pay-per-event notice charge per row returned (plus Apify's start event). Rows dropped by filters, already returned (onlyNew), superseded by a correction, or skipped are never charged. Free-plan Apify accounts are capped at 100 rows per run.

Licence

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Find a Tender service (UK Cabinet Office). The same line is in every row's licence field; keep it when you pass the data on.