It’s been another busy week in FSB’s Westminster office, writes Phil Collier (pictured), Federation of Small Businesses Area Leader for Cumbria. While still dealing with Covid and Brexit related issues, the team have published a report into an area which has long frustrated businesses in Cumbria and beyond – red tape and regulation.
Regulatory requirements are a key concern for small businesses and the time is ripe for changes to the UK’s regulation system, according to FSB.
Long before the pandemic and the country’s exit from the European Union, small businesses were struggling to manage the regulatory changes they were expected to keep across on a day-to-day basis.
Since a new EU-UK trade deal took effect, around a fifth of small firms say they have a reduced understanding of the regulations they are faced with in the round, with almost 40 percent struggling to understand new rules linked to fresh arrangements with the EU.
Off the back of the findings, FSB is recommending a British Columbia style regulatory system, which would help to capitalise on the opportunities that withdrawing from the bloc presents.
In the early 2000s, the Province underwent huge changes to their regulatory system which saw unnecessary rules and bureaucracy slashed, while crucially ensuring other regulations were clear to understand, helping to spur productivity.
The reforms saw the regulatory burden, including the slimming down of paperwork that small businesses need to complete for different parts of government, reduced by a third.
FSB is urging the Government to learn from the British Columbia model, appointing a minister to be accountable for the Government’s regulatory reduction programme, alongside:
- A public central database of all regulatory requirements, with a league table showing departmental progress against the one third reduction target.
- On reaching the one third target, installation of a ‘one-in, one-out’ or ‘one-in, two-out’ rule regarding new regulations.
- Widespread reform of regulation culture within the UK, moving the country towards simplified regulations and regulatory requirements, and reinvigoration of Departments as they undertake regulatory impact assessments on new proposals.
FSB will be discussing this with the Government in the coming weeks and asking that our collective covid recovery can be assisted through simplification of some of these regulatory barriers which will allow all businesses to focus more on growing and providing local wealth.
We’ve also seen the welcome news this week that small businesses will be exempt from the new rules around advertising of junk food which will come into force at the end of next year. The proposals in their original form could’ve seen small firms stopped from promoting online and via their own websites. Very few smaller businesses have the marketing budget to run large-scale tv campaigns (the main target of the legislation) so targets around tackling obesity should be able to be achieved without stopping small food producers and retailers using their own channels to promote their offer.
The revised proposals are much more fit for purpose and we are pleased that the Government has listened to the concerns of FSB and others. We know that this issue was a major concern for many small firms, and it shows the power of small businesses joining together to have a louder and clearer voice, backed by the access to key decision-makers which FSB has at a local and national level.
