A newly launched service will name and shame Oxfordshire businesses on the Internet, when they do not pay their bills on time, writes David Duffy.

The aim of the service is to catch the habitual business late payers that are costing honest Oxfordshire businesses and the local authority thousands of pounds each year, in lost revenue, interest payments and wasted man hours.

The service, at website www.solpre.com, is similar to a conventional debt collection service, except, instead of threatening court action, the debtor is named and shamed on the Internet if the debt is not paid within two weeks.

Research firm Experian claims Oxfordshire is seeing an increase in the number of late business payers.

Steve Kilmister, of Experian, said large businesses were taking 80 days to pay their invoices, almost a week more than they did last year. He said: "The trend for late paying is going up despite the clear message from Government that the culture of late payment is unacceptable and damaging to business."

David Scott, a freelance contractor from Banbury, had been waiting for more than six weeks to be paid by an Oxford based company.

He said: "I still had received nothing after six weeks and I did not have the time to go through legal proceedings, so I contacted Solpre and a week later received a cheque." Ron Rodney, co-founder of Solpre, said: "What happened to Mr Scott is typical of what happens to small businesses who get caught up with late payers. We're going to stop all of that and shake things up so that late payers do not get away with it.

"The only way to get businesses to pay quickly is to embarrass and shame them publicly, and that's what we're going to do."