Making a claim against DWP for non payment of invoices

Dave71_2

Hi, 
Hopefully i've got the right forum, apologies if not. 

I am owed £1800 from the DWP for work done for them. The invoices are now 5 months plus overdue. 
I have sent email upon email and got absolutely nowhere so feel that all that is left is for me to issue a letter before action and escalate it to the small claims court. 

Firstly, can you do this to a government department? 
Secondly, is there anything beyond the realms of a normal LBA that should be included ( as its a gov department)
Thirdly, has anybody done anything similar or got any further advice ? 

Thanks
Dave

Savvy_Sue

Dave71_2 said:

Secondly, is there anything beyond the realms of a normal LBA that should be included ( as its a gov department)

I would imagine that your submission would include the Purchase Order authorising you to go ahead with the work, plus any contract clearly setting out that they wish to pay you to do X, and will pay you £Y for doing it. 

Your invoice, including the purchase order reference and showing your terms for payment, would also be an obvious inclusion. 

The LBA and the claim has to be against the 'right' place, and I am not sure what that would be: I just know if you were claiming against a small business, you'd need to claim against the right entity - if a Ltd Company instructed you to do the work, then their address, but if they stopped trading before paying you, you'd be stuck. 

You need - LBA or request for payment, government department or small business - to ensure that you are complying with the terms agreed. When I worked in larger organisations, it didn't matter how late we were paying: we weren't going to do it if you didn't comply with OUR terms - if your invoice didn't show the PO it would not be paid. If you sent it to the wrong place, it would go round in circles getting to the right place, then back out to the manager who authorised the PO, then back to the finance office duly authorised for payment. Then it would sit within the finance dept while a finance person got round to approving it, and THEN it would be added to the pile of 'payments to be made'. Even then, payments were made to strict timescales, never same day, often at the end of the month. 

Jeremy535897

I don't think you can sue the government or any of its departments for non-payment of debts.

tightauldgit

Jeremy535897 said:

I don't think you can sue the government or any of its departments for non-payment of debts.

Interesting. So the government can simply not pay its suppliers and they have no recourse? 

Jeremy535897

I am not sure. I think that a lot of contracts are with government owned commercial entities, and they would be subject to the normal commercial rules. I know you cannot take HMRC to the small claims court when they owe you money but don't get on with paying you.

Brie

I am certainly not trying to let DWP off the hook but as someone who has handled purchasing and paying invoices for a large corporation I know how very difficult it can be to get payments made.  And I expect it may be even more bureaucratic for a government agency. 

Unfortunately it's not as simple as sending in an invoice and waiting for a cheque or bank transfer.  You should have been set up as a supplier when the purchase order/quote was raised. This will normally require you supplying all sorts of information about your business.  Our company had about 6 levels of approval to get a new supplier set up. The order then would need to go through another approval process (again a number of layers).  You would then need to send your invoice back through to them normally via their purchasing system quoting the PO number and matching exactly the amount on the PO.  (invoicing for less is generally ok but not for more)  The invoice would then need to be approved - possibly manually (more layers) - and then payment would be made based on their IT scheduling.  This time of year it was normally a case of approval being needed by about mid month to get payment before Christmas otherwise it would be in the January payment cycle.  FYI - each layer of approval at any step could take as long as it took any individual to look at an email/system/etc so might be a day/week/month.

All of this will be complicated if you do not have a trained contact within the DWP who knows how to work with the system to get you paid.  Even worse if you did have someone as a contact who has now either left, moved roles, gone on holiday/mat/sick leave as chances are there will be no one assigned to take over their work.

Generally as well getting everything sorted was much easier if the supplier was a large company as they had their own dedicated staff to deal with things.  Smaller suppliers (such as yourself perhaps) seemed less able to cope with all the hoop jumping that was required.  That said I had a couple of very large companies that we used and had used for years who had invoices up to 2 years old that were outstanding for various reasons.  All of this was then complicated every time we "improved" our systems.

So - you need to find the right person to talk to.  This may be via your emails.  Or is there a phone number for someone/anyone on the purchase order or any other correspondence you have.  Set up an email with all the information you have pertinent to the payment and email everyone at least once a week to see if you can get anyone to respond.  You could try something legal (LBA or whatever) but you will still need to find someone who can and is willing to help you get this resolved.

I wish you success - but I suspect it will take some time yet.

Savvy_Sue

Brie has reminded me of some of the complexities I'd forgotten! Occasionally still come across requirements for US to be registered as a supplier - always makes me glad I do very little finance these days ... 

penners324

What does the online portal say about payment for your invoices?

daveyjp

Jeremy535897 said:

I don't think you can sue the government or any of its departments for non-payment of debts.

Of course you can if there's a contractual relationship for them to pay you money for goods or services provided.

Jeremy535897

daveyjp said:

Jeremy535897 said:

I don't think you can sue the government or any of its departments for non-payment of debts.

Of course you can if there's a contractual relationship for them to pay you money for goods or services provided.

As I said earlier, I think the contracts tend to be with government owned entities, where commercial rules would apply.