Cuts to red tape for business

Business Minister, Michael Fallon, has set out new measures aimed at abolishing or improving outdated and over-complicated regulations which waste businesses’ time and money.

Cuts to red tape announced today (27th January 2014) include:

• Reducing 100 “overlapping and confusing standards” applied by councils to new homes to less than 10. Any necessary remaining standards will be consolidated as far as possible into Building Regulations to avoid duplication and confusion.
• Making it easier and cheaper for businesses to meet environmental obligations – by March 2015 Defra will make environmental guidance simpler, quicker and clearer to understand, reducing 100,000 pages of environmental guidance by over 80%.
• Eliminating unnecessary paperwork to record waste management. Environmental regulations require all businesses to have a paper-based audit trail for any waste they produce, carry, keep, import or dispose of to show that they have passed their waste over to an authorised recipient. The Environment Agency are this week replacing this with an electronic system, eliminating the need for 23.5 million paper Waste Transfer Notes each year.
• According to the Government, too many people think that you can’t use a ladder at work: new Health and Safety guidance published this week will make it clear that you can.