Yesterday was Regulation Freedom Day according to the IoD
This is a bit like the calculation of when the average person has to work to in the year before they start earning any money after all taxes etc are taken out of their pay. So for the average company Director the 10th Feb marks how much time yearly they spend completing red tape paperwork.
In 2010 the amount of time spent dealing with red tape leapt to 17 hours from 13 hours a month – according to the IoD’s second annual survey.
This growing burden of regulation will cost companies over £111bn this year, equivalent to the entire economic output of Singapore, the IoD calculated. This amount of lost time in a business is obviously a critical barrier to growth.
Its unlikely that this year or next will get any better though with the impact of flexible working requests, scrapping of the default retirement age, the temporary workers directive, new pension regulations and a host of other proposed bits of legislation.
The whole thing needs looking at if we are going to encourage the private sector – especially small and micro businesses to grow.