Emma Davies prescribes a regulatory health check
There has been a spate of recent announcements from the coalition government regarding reducing the regulatory burden on businesses, including the Red Tape Challenge where once a fortnight, the government invites comments on regulations affecting a particular sector (manufacturing is next), in the hope of simplifying or even removing those posing the greatest burden.
Alongside this, there is an ongoing consultation on health and safety laws, and the “One-In-One-Out” policy requires the impact of any proposed regulation to be calculated, and before it can be introduced, requires the repeal of any equally costly existing regulation. This ensures that any new regulations are cost-neutral for businesses in terms of compliance. The caveat to this is that not every business is equally affected by every regulation—so the net effect for some businesses may be less neutral than for others.
But there are some areas where it is likely that regulation will always remain—principally where safety is concerned—and rather than reducing regulation in these areas, the government intends that these will increasingly become a matter of self-regulation. In addition to
