“We keep on getting more reports and more wringing of hands,” says Rudi Klein, chief executive of the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group. “Nothing ever changes. Bad practice is embedded 50ft into the ground in this industry.” 

Klein represents a group of seven trade bodies for engineering subcontractors, and he has spent more than two decades campaigning for better payment practices. For Klein, the problem is an urgent and severe one that is doing significant damage to small firms, as “main contractors retaining funds through late payment are putting their supply chains in financial peril”. Many small firms are unable to get insurance to work with the UK’s biggest construction companies because of the ailing balance sheets of those main contractors. And yet in Klein’s 20 years on this particular soapbox, not much has changed. The private member’s bill in the House of Commons to rein in damaging retention practices, proposed by Tory MP Peter Aldous, has been delayed five times, leading to doubts it will ever be heard.  

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