Clive was joined by great friends of the show Tom from Gardenscape and the Small Business Commissioner Liz Barclay for some advice.

Tom said: “I think it’s a huge problem for everyone really because I know a lot of tradespeople at least I do, buy a lot of materials on credit and pay at the end of the month. If you don’t have the money from your client at the end of the month, you almost have the ‘wolves’ knocking on your door each month. It’s really very hard to not only keep your accounts in order but to keep yourself sane and in the process causing a lot of strain not only for ourselves but our better half as well.

“There is one story that does come to mind and the incident happened two years ago and involved not even huge amounts, am talking £500, which in the grand scheme of things I could cope without but that’s not really the point. If I have done the work, I ought to be paid for it.”

A caller to the show Ben suggested: “Why isn’t there something in place where you can check the customers previous payments with previous trades they’ve paid, although you’d need a better jingle than check a customer, check a customer.com. Doesn’t have quite the same ring as check a trade check a trade.com!”

Another caller Dan Tyson, said: “I got stiffed for a final payment of 2,464 quid back in august. The landlord apparently sold the house to a relative who said he never wanted the work done.”

And another caller Jed Marshy, said: “I must admit so many customers try to reduce your last stage once the works complete. They get what they want but its ok for me not to get what was agreed?”

Leon Williams from Isle Paint It, added: “I got stung for almost £700 when I first started out 10 years ago, I went and bought all paints for a full house decoration only for the customer to message the night before saying they had found someone much cheaper to do the work, ever since then I always take a 50% deposit upfront and payment on completion I also state in my terms that final payment is due no later than seven days after the date on my invoice any delays will incur late charges.”

Barclay noted that the industry is seeing more and more domestic customers not being able to pay  but they have gone through with the builder and done all the spec and the builder has gone on to do the work but not getting paid. “So, we are seeing more and more small businesses coming to us saying we are not getting paid by our domestic customers. It then becomes a question of taking the to court and if they don’t have the money you could be throwing good money on the bad. If you are talking about small businesses not getting paid by bigger businesses, then that’s a different matter. What we are seeing is a quarter of invoices not getting paid on time. Where they used to pay within 30 days it’s gone to 45-days and more.”

For the full show, listen here.