Andy Burnham and John Healey have promised to remove regulatory burdens for firms before the Budget next week. The PM and Chancellor noted these measures could provide a total saving of £800 million.
Measures include simplifying corporate reporting requirements, reducing duplicative reporting burdens for asset managers, and streamlining the home-buying and selling process. The government will also extend import tariff suspensions on more than 250 products favored by businesses.
Focus on small businesses
The changes aim to make compliance guidance clearer and more small business-friendly. Burnham and Healey will meet with small business owners and representative organizations, including the Federation of Small Businesses, at Number 10 to accept recommendations from the Small Business Taskforce.
The Taskforce has worked with business leaders to identify and reduce the bureaucracy holding firms back. Burnham said: “If you run a business, you want to spend your time serving your customers, creating jobs, and growing your firm, not filling in unnecessary forms.”
Healey added: “British firms are fed up with form-filling and pointless paperwork that eats into valuable time and money when they simply want to get on with running their businesses.”
Reducing Red Tape for Business Growth
The government is taking steps to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, aiming to give businesses more freedom to grow and create jobs. By simplifying processes and cutting red tape, they want to make it easier for companies to operate and succeed.
Business leaders react
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “A baker should be filling pasties, not forms. This sounds simple but thousands of businesses are spending hours having to prioritize complicated paperwork and duplicate reporting over grafting, investing, and achieving their full potential.”
Tina McKenzie, national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the Taskforce’s report sets out clear, practical, and tailored recommendations to help lessen the burden of red tape on small businesses. She highlighted the decision to pause plans for full profit and loss accounts to be filed at Companies House by the smallest businesses as a huge step in the right direction.
