More than half of small firms in the UK do not anticipate any help from the government in tackling late payment problems, according to research from Bacs.

The data shows that 56% of companies are dealing with these problems by themselves, by sharpening up their billing and credit control procedures.

However, there are still 769,000 companies affected by late payments and the total amount of money owed to them is now nearly a third more than it was six months ago. In total £24.6bn is now owed to businesses across Britain.

"Recovering debt as quickly and as smoothly as possible is one of the key aspects to staying afloat in difficult markets and tight economic times," said David Green, chief executive of positivecollections.co.uk.

"This is hugely important for the business community as a whole if we don't want to see this debt culture spiral out of control and have a very real impact on the health of small business and general economic recovery."