Business Management zone

No regulation without consultation, entrepreneurs demand

Almost 600 small business owners have signed a petition calling for the government to consult with businesses before introducing new regulations.

The campaign, by BusinessZone.co.uk and sister website HRZone.co.uk, was originally started to force the government to delay Sunday's introduction of new sexual harassment rules after it was revealed they were laid down with no Parliamentary debate and little publicity on 14 March.

Although the rules have now been implemented, the two websites are urging more entrepreneurs, HR professionals and anyone with an interest in the small business sector to sign the petition on the Downing Street website to demonstrate to ministers that SMEs will no longer tolerate regulation without consultation.

Dan Martin, editor of BusinessZone.co.uk, said: "We had very little time to set up our petition given the short notice provided by the government. But the level of interest shows just how firms feel about legislation being sneaked through without them being told about it.

"The government has admitted that it will cost small businesses almost £10m to comply with the new sexual harassment but has provided very little information as to how they should act.

"Although we have smashed the target of 200 signatories which we needed to force Gordon Brown to reply, I urge more small company owners and HR professionals to join us in calling on the government to always take the views of business into account when introducing new rules."

As of 1745 BST, 580 people had signed the petition.

Number of comments: 1

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MYOB Blog Team, 16 April 2008 @ 10:08 AM

Healthy demand for business consultancy
Yet again, life imitates art (well… Accrual World), and while we would never want to see an Albion Party in real-life(www.accrualwordforaccountants.com), we completely agree that the small business owner is in need of more support. We surveyed the small business community last year and found that 58% of small business owners believe financial management pressures had risen over the last year. 55% blamed increasing tax complexities as the biggest contributing factor to the growing financial burden.

There is an increasing need for accountants to support small businesses in the UK and not purely around compliance issues – there is a healthy demand for business consultancy that would help SMEs to get a better understanding of challenges such as new legislation. MBT supports this petition and members of the team have signed up.