Award Winner 2019: Trade Body Campaign of the Year

Award Winner 2019: Trade Body Campaign of the Year

Federation of Small Businesses (FSB): ‘Fair Pay, Fair Play - Everyone deserves to be paid on time’

The 2019 PRCA Public Affairs Awards celebrated the best work of the year and below is the category's winning entry.

The Federation of Small Businesses is the UK’s largest business group with 165,000 members – small business owners/the self-employed. Our primary 2019 campaign has been to tackle the scourge of late payments. We developed the campaign in 3 steps:

1. Identifying a window of opportunity for change, and a strategic choice to prioritise over all other campaign activity

2. A campaign plan underpinned by unquestionable evidence-based policy work, and an elegant policy solution

3. Targeted high-level engagement supported by cross-party political, media, online and member campaigning

Identifying a window of opportunity for change, and a strategic choice to prioritise over all other campaign activity

FSB lobbies on issues that affect small businesses, chosen due to 1) strength of feeling among members, and 2) political achievability of creating change. The problem of late payments to small business has stubbornly persisted, but Carillion’s collapse in 2018 later provided the opportunity for reform. Despite being paid by Government within five days, we discovered Carillion was squeezing suppliers by extending payment terms to 126 days – 4 months. They used being a signatory to the weak voluntary Prompt Payment Code, as cover.

From Party Conference season 2018, we made Late Payments ‘FSB’s No.1 issue’. This was both a strategy and a comms message to stakeholders. All firepower would be focused on this campaign, above all others.

A campaign plan underpinned by unquestionable evidence-based policy work, and an elegant policy solution

We published research revealing:

• 80% of small businesses were paid late
• Average delayed invoice was £6,142, for 6 weeks beyond terms
• The worst culprits were large firms
• The problem was worsening - damaging productivity, costing £2.5bn in lost GDP, closing 50,000 businesses each year

We proposed an elegant, radical 3-point reform package:

• Make every large company Audit Committee accountable for its payment practices, and reporting in the Annual Report. This shifts the issue from the Finance Director to whole-Board ownership
• Reform the Prompt Payment Code and bring into Government under the Small Business Commissioner
• Stop late payers (future Carillions) from winning public contracts if they don’t pay 95% of invoices in 60 days

Targeted high-level engagement supported by cross-party political, media, online and member campaigning

Our aim was to secure the above in a reform package in Spring and Summer 2019. We made late payments our no.1 issue and used our research in all meetings and calls with the Prime Minister; Chancellor of the Exchequer; Business Secretary, officials and SpAds. We focused on the Chancellor’s team, as most people lobbied him to cut a tax or spend more £. Instead, our no.1 proposal would not cost public £, instead showing leadership of the UK economy. The Chancellor agreed, launching a call to evidence “to tackle the scourge of late payments” which the Prime Minister highlighted in a video to our members.