Regulation

Small business services

Regulation impacts every part of a small business, from the premises, to the staff, even down to the cheque book. We understand that a degree of regulation is necessary to protect the interests of your business and your customers. Yet time spent complying with regulation means time away from the day-to-day tasks of the business.

Our position

Our policy team is working to make sure that excessive regulation does not stand in the way of our members growing and running their businesses.

We are trying to help our members cope with compliance by providing support and guidance for most types of regulation. Besides our member helpline and step-by-step guides for employment and health and safety regulation, we are also putting the pressure on government to reduce the overall burden of regulation.

We are working with the Better Regulation Executive in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to make sure that the Government cuts down on unnecessary regulation wherever possible.

We also want regulators to use common sense in enforcement and recognise that most businesses try very hard to be compliant.

Latest developments

June 2009 – The Forum has attended a meeting of the BRE to give them a perspective on how to best help businesses by reducing regulation. The Government's targets for reducing regulation in the period 2010 to 2015 will be set this summer.
The Anderson Review has been passed to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in an effort to improve the Government's support for its guidance. We will continue to be involved as BIS produces pilot programmes for support.
The Equality Bill is now in the Committee stage in the House of Commons. We will continue to monitor its progress to make sure our members aren't overly burdened when it passed.
The Government announced on 2 April 2009 that it won't follow-through on its proposed system of regulatory budgets. Instead, it will establish new committees to help oversee the current 'better regulation' agenda.

Latest research

In order to gain a greater understanding of the impact of regulation on business, we surveyed our members in July 2009 on the cost of compliance. Click here to view the results.

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