Monmouthshire has been accused of being the worst council in Wales when it comes to paying its bills on time writes the Chronicle's ANDY SHERWILL.

Figures obtained from the Welsh Government by Labour Assembly Member Joyce Watson revealed that in the past financial year, the Conservative council was late paying suppliers on nearly one in four occasions.

Welsh Government guidelines suggests that non contested invoices should be paid within 30 days and ideally in 10 days.

Mrs Watson, a member of the Assembly's Enterprise and Business Committee, said the Conservative council's failure to pay invoices promptly was "hurting" small businesses in 2010-11 as Monmouthshire County Council failed to meet the 30-day target in 23.5 percent of cases, and only paid invoices within 10 days some 20 percent of the time.

She added: "Procurement contracts are a crucial way in which public bodies can support Welsh business, and reliable cash-flow is vital for smaller firms, especially.

"Over the summer I met more than 30 individual traders, businesses, groups and trade boards who said that delays in local authorities paying invoices on time was the biggest issue for them."

Monmouthshire County Councillor Armand Watts, who sits on the authority's economy and development committee, said: "Monmouthshire has had a dreadful record on this for years – they are consistently the worst offending local authority in Wales.

"It's very unfair on the firms that do business with the council.

"They shouldn't have to wait a month or more to get paid for the goods and services they supply – it's scandalous, really."

But cabinet member Councillor Phil Murphy refuted some of these claims and said: "We accept that we could do better at paying our bills on time. But to suggest that we are 'letting business down' is simply preposterous.

"Helping business, as well as supporting the vulnerable and maintaining a high standard of education is one of our three spending priorities.

"We have launched a range of initiatives that support small and large enterprises. These include our Back to Business Week, our Economic Development Service's strategic partnership with Venture Wales, our work to improve the county's broadband infrastructure, our green deal and the practical day to day support and advice we give businesses of all sizes each and every day.

"I believe that we are the leading council in Wales in supporting and encouraging business and enterprise and we have many more initiatives in the pipeline."

Councillor Murphy pointed out that Monmouthshire was the poorest funded authority per head of population in Wales by a significant margin.

He added: "And this year's provisional settlement from the Welsh Government will see us taking a further 1.7 percent cut in funding – the largest in Wales.

"Given this and the decision that we have made to protect education spending, social services spending and economic development spending, it's regrettable, but not surprising, that some of our back office functions don't have the kind of staffing levels that we need to be able to pay our bills more quickly.

"But we are working on a range of improvements to the way we deal with this vital responsibility and I'm confident that we will soon see a significant improvement."