Small- and medium-sized retailers and wholesalers in the UK are being hampered by an increasingly high level of bad debt, according to Barclays Bank.
The Barclays Local Business annual Late Payments Report says that on any given day companies in the sector are owed £1.2bn due to customers failing to pay on time. It says £793m of bad debt has been written off over the last 12 months after a 40 per cent rise in late payments.