Late payments have become a fixture of doing business in the UK - they're the storm clouds that slow businesses' ability to grow and invest. Adfin was built to clear them: businesses that use Adfin see a late payment rate of just 8.7%, well below the wider UK picture. We looked at each region of the UK to understand the challenges in more detail, examining 289,000 invoices paid by 1,216 UK businesses on Adfin, from October 2025 - July 2026.
See how every region compares →
Region report: South West
The South West is one of the wetter parts of England - the regional average (which also picks up Wales' hills) runs to around 1,263mm a year, more than any other English region in this data.
Adfin's own book shows the South West holding steady: the late rate has moved only slightly, from 9% to 10% over nine months - essentially flat once you account for normal month-to-month swings. Small and large businesses are close together too, at 9% and 11%.
That stability is worth putting in context. The wider South West economy has had a tough run externally - R3 data shows the region posted the sharpest year-on-year fall in insolvency activity of any UK region (-18.8%), alongside a drop in late-payment volume (-5.7%). Set against that backdrop, it's worth remembering what these numbers mean day to day: Adfin's overall late rate across the UK is 8.7%, against a national large-business average of 15% reported by gov.uk. South West businesses on Adfin, at 9.6%, are getting paid close to twice as reliably as the wider market - even in a quarter where their own trend line ticked up slightly.
Learn about how the South West stacks up against the rest of the UK in our first Payment Barometer →
