Foster & Partners failed to pay more than half its invoices within timescales agreed with its suppliers, according to payment data it supplied - two months late - to the government.

The architect took an average of 39 days to pay its bills, a deterioration of more than a fortnight on last year when the average was 23 days.

It paid 59% of invoices within 30 days and 88% within 60 days, putting it near the bottom of the league of an admittedly very small number of architects whose size requires them to report the data.

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