The Government\u2019s Small Business Commissioner Paul Uppal has named and shamed high street health food giant Holland & Barrett over their payment practices.<\/p>\n
The high street chain is considered to be the biggest company to have been named and shamed to date for their culture of late payment.<\/p>\n
The Commissioner, heard about the situation after a small IT business lodged a complaint with his office over an unpaid \u00a315,000 invoice.<\/p>\n
The agreed payment term for the invoice was 30 days. After the deadline lapsed, the IT business contacted Holland & Barrett and struggled to get the issue resolved, it was only after the Commissioner\u2019s intervention that the payment was made 37 days late.<\/p>\n
In his report on the matter, Paul Uppal detailed the chain\u2019s refusal to cooperate, in particular the lack of reasoning on why there was, in fact, a delay, and highlighted the company\u2019s silence following a request to the Holland & Barrett Chief Financial Officer to engage with the Commissioner on the publication of the report.<\/p>\n
The Small Business Commissioner said: \u201cHolland & Barrett\u2019s refusal to cooperate with my investigation, as well as their published poor payment practices says to me that this is a company that doesn\u2019t care about its suppliers or take prompt payment seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not the first time Holland & Barrett have been associated with a late payment culture, last year the Government identified the chain as one of the few retailers to take longer than 60 days to pay an invoice on average.<\/p>\n
In the latest Government data, the high street chain has been found to still have a culture of late payment. On average, Holland & Barrett took 68 days to pay its invoices and 60 per cent of invoices were not paid within agreed terms.<\/p>\n
Rachel Reeves MP, who leads the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy\u2019s committee said: \u201cThese actions show that it is not only a parliamentary committee and the small business commissioner which Holland & Barrett hold in contempt but small businesses too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe behaviour of Holland & Barrett in these instances underlines the BEIS committee\u2019s call for companies who flout the rules to not only be named and shamed but also subject to fines.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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