Wirral Council takes action to avoid missing invoice deadlines
It's emerged the local authority could have faced a £700,000 interest bill
Last updated 22nd Jun 2025
Wirral Council has taken action to tackle a past failure to pay invoices on time meant it could have left the local authority paying £700,000 in interest.
After regulations over public contracts became law in 2015, councils have to publish data on how good they are at paying invoices on time within 30 days. Between April 2016 and March 2023, the council paid almost all of its invoices on time at a rate of 97% or above.
However this has seen a significant drop of nearly 20% in the financial year that finished in March 2024. This showed only 78.24% of invoices were paid within 30 days.
Due to those legal breaches, this could have seen the council having to pay £704,312,03 to businesses and other organisations it didn’t pay on time. However the amount paid to suppliers so far is significantly smaller with only £449.14 paid, notably less than the £4,662.70 paid out between April 2022 and March 2023.
This led to calls by the council’s Liberal Democrats for the council to take action, warning tax payers “could end up footing the bill for system failures.” Cllrs Stuart Kelly and Phil Gilchrist said it was “bad news” for small and medium sized businesses who “often run very tight margins and may struggle to survive due to unpaid bills.”
Cllr Kelly previously told the LDRS: “The council exposes itself to the risk of having to pay interest on overdue accounts. I know I can think of better ways of spending £700,000 of council tax payers money. This needs to improve to reduce the risk of small businesses failing due to cashflow and to prevent any avoidable waste of council tax money.”
This was later endorsed by all councillors who asked Director of Finance Matthew Bennett outline the steps being taken to address the issues and reduce any potential liability. Now a report will be brought before councillors on June 26.
An investigation into why there was such a large increase found the statistics for that year were based on the date on the invoice, and not on the date stamp of when invoices were actually received by the council or on occasions confirmation of receipt of a valid invoice.
On top of this, the council said: “Additionally invoices in dispute, once resolved, reverted again back to the date on the invoice rather than the date of resolution.” Now the council it had significantly improved things.
In the last financial year between April 2024 and March 2025, 98.1% of invoices were paid within 30 days. This led to a value of £30,610.54 due to the late payments.
Going forward the council report said: “There is still room for improvement and over the next financial year officers will be working hard to improve statistics further.”