THE Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group has welcomed the UK Government’s plans to exclude poor payers from government procurement.
The construction body was responding to the Government’s announcement that it will be introducing a package of measures to support SMEs supplying to government contracts.
SEC Group CEO, Rudi Klein said, “We have been urging the Government to introduce a yellow/red card system for a long time. The yellow card is a warning to improve payment performance and the red card excludes a continuing poor performer from bidding for government contracts for a period of 2 to 3 years.”
Rudi Klein said that if such a system had been in place previously, Carillion would have been excluded from government contracts.
SEC Group said the Government should still go further on the issue of payment security, calling for legislation requiring the use of project bank accounts for all public sector projects, and protection of cash retentions.
