{"id":866037,"date":"2025-08-18T21:12:45","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T02:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/18\/cabinet-office-withdraws-project-bank-account-guidance\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T21:12:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T02:12:45","slug":"cabinet-office-withdraws-project-bank-account-guidance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/18\/cabinet-office-withdraws-project-bank-account-guidance\/","title":{"rendered":"Cabinet Office withdraws project bank account guidance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Generic_financial_money_20_cash_wages_salaries_660.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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The Cabinet Office has withdrawn its official guidance on project bank accounts (PBAs), 13 years after it was first published.<\/span><\/p>\n

The guidance is still online, but a prominent note has been added by the department, saying that it is \u201cnow out of date\u201d and that \u201ca replacement is being prepared\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cabinet Office developed PBAs in 2012 to protect subcontractors from losing <\/span>retention<\/span><\/a> money when the main contractors that owe it go under.<\/span><\/p>\n

PBAs grew in importance<\/span> following tier-one contractor Carillion\u2019s collapse in 2018<\/span><\/a>, which caused \u00a32bn worth of damage to the supply chain.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cabinet Office then institutionalised PBAs in its 2020 Construction Playbook guidance on the procurement and delivery of publicly funded projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

Construction News <\/span><\/i>asked the Cabinet Office why it had withdrawn the advice on PBAs and when it would publish updated guidance, but had not heard back by the time of publication.<\/span><\/p>\n

PBAs work by earmarking funds due to subcontractors in separate bank accounts, so that the main contractors cannot access the money.<\/span><\/p>\n

The government guidance lists several benefits of PBAs, including \u201ceffective mitigation to the risk of payment delay and cost associated with it and avoidable supply chain failure\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

PBAs are \u201cintended to allow payment to named suppliers to continue in the event of the insolvency of the contractor\u201d, the guidance added.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cabinet Office procurement rules say PBAs should be used unless there are \u201ccompelling reasons\u201d not to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iain McIlwee, chief executive of the Finishes and Interiors Sector, said the PBA guidance \u201cclearly does need to be reviewed\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe important thing is to understand where and how administrative issues have failed those that should benefit from PBAs,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis means having a clear plan for how the PBA should be managed in the event of a failure,\u201d McIlwee said, pointing to Scotland, where all PBAs need more than one trustee so that clients can step in and manage payments into the PBA.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully the withdrawal is part of a holistic review of PBAs and the wider digital payment environment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob Driscoll, director of legal and business at the Electrical Contractors\u2019 Association, said: \u201cWe\u2019re confident that [the] Cabinet Office will want to update their previous guidance \u2013 along with the Construction Playbook \u2013 to evolve into project-wide digitisation of payment and pave the way for modern technology-based solutions that will include digital project wallets.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUpgraded guidance and a playbook should be ready to go by now in this area so there\u2019s no reason to delay.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2023, <\/span>CN <\/span><\/i>revealed that government departments were<\/span> failing to regularly use PBAs on large construction projects<\/span><\/a>, despite the guidance in the Construction Playbook.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Joshua Stein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cabinet Office has withdrawn its official guidance on project bank accounts (PBAs), 13 years after it was first published. The guidance is still online, but a prominent note has been added by the department, saying that it is \u201cnow out of date\u201d and that \u201ca replacement is being prepared\u201d. The Cabinet Office developed PBAs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":866038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24439,980],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-866037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cabinet","8":"category-office"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}