Business: Red Tape Takes Its Toll

The survey of over 150 small and medium-sized firms across the UK found that respondents spent almost two working days every month dealing with health and safety.

The FPB’s chief executive, Nick Goulding, says the burden is becoming too heavy for smaller firms, “The statistics show the amount of time being spent on health and safety is a real distraction from the day-to-day running of a smaller business.”

FPB members were asked how long they spend dealing with health and safety in the workplace in an average month. They were asked to take into account time taken to understand updates to regulation, implementation, action and monitoring.

The results showed that 47% of respondents spent more than seven hours a month coping with health and safety regulations, while 19% spent between a day and a week every month coming to terms with health and safety red tape. The average time spent was 14 hours per month.

Respondents were asked how time-consuming health and safety regulations were in terms of both administration and time spent understanding them. Fifty-seven percent said administration was very time consuming, while 56% said understanding health and safety regulations was very time consuming.

Mr Goulding said that on both fronts smaller businesses were struggling, “These findings show that owner-managers not only feel that health and safety form-filling is extremely time-consuming, but also that keeping up to date and understanding changes is also a burden. The amount of time spent on these areas replaces the time spent on supervision, which could have a greater impact on safety.”

The research was carried out ahead of the common commencement date for many new regulations on 6th April. Among those due to be introduced next month are proposed changes to the Construction Design Management Regulations (CDM), which the FPB believes will place many new responsibilities onto smaller businesses having building work carried out. Mr Goulding wants a rethink of the proposed changes that have been laid before Parliament. “We must have simplified regulations, greater clarity to encourage understanding and allow smaller businesses to implement them with greater ease. The size of companies must be a consideration when new regulations are proposed. In the case of CDM, many small businesses will be totally unaware of the new responsibilities they will be asked to assume and we would call for a rethink whilst the potential impact is assessed.”