Dragon blasts UK red tape

Either make it easier for businesss to apply for initiatives such as the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme or make it more difficult to apply for state benefits.

Most start-ups are bewildered not only by the amount of forms that they need to complete for tax and funding but that there are now so many other barriers to starting up from planning to legal basics.

Virtual Tax assistance for accountants: www.rossmartin.co.uk

It isn't just the Red Tape is it? It's also the labyrinthine means of getting to information and the poor quality of what is on offer. Business Link is a joke, unless you are a 16 year old school leaver with no commercial experience. trying to find a way through the govt mismanaged maze of grants, funds, "support" and schemes needs the type of support available only in large well funded fat organisations - like the civil service.

What we need is a simple process with a transparent portal as both supplier and consumer. Comparethesupport .com Simples !

John Hill
www.huntersm.com

...to Gordon Stalin's apparatchiks is a CWOT: they've not been interested for a decade and they're certainly not now there's power to be clung on to at any cost.

That half the population depends on rent- or child-subsidies to top up their insufficient wages was a well-meaning, but now-unaffordable policy too. No-one dare tackle THAT hot potato!

No, abolish the EFGS as well. Its impact on companies is neutral - at best. In my own experience it provides phenomenal profits to the banking sector and removes the need for banks to establish a professional relationship with their borrowers. Giving funding to companies will *always* involve red tape. Better for government to get out of the business of providing capital and put *all* the money from guarantee schemes, BusinessLink (and most of DBERR) towards the abolition of Employer's National Insurance.

It is about time that the long-term unemployed were put to work helping the 'less well off' in their neighborhood by gardening, street sweeping, window cleaning, etc. so that they make some sort of contribution towards their keep, and the 'keep' should never exceed minimum wages. I get sick & tired of seeing some unemployed enjoying a better lifestyle than the people who pay tax to support them!

Some unemployed choose to have 20 (slight exaggeration!!) children AFTER becoming unemployed - or - before ever becoming employed! Why do I (the taxpayer) have to support them and provide suitable housing? The contributers of this nation wouldn't dream of starting a familiy until they were able to support them. Children brought up in an unemployed household grow up beleiving that unemployment is normal, and that going to work for money is 'stupid', and a whole new generation of the unemployed is created for us to support.

Doug Richard is a member of our Board and we agree whole-heartedly with him on these points.

We would add that business owners must strive to utilise all other resources available to them, including new web-based technologies that provide functionality that help make companies fast, efficient and more profitable. Cloud Computing has made cutting edge technology, traditionally reserved for big business, available to SMEs. We have seen cloud powered small businesses leap-frog their larger competitors as a result of switching to the next generation of business software. Watch an interview with Doug on this here.

An article on this website also reported how Cloud technology has helped make businesses more robust and continue trading through the bad weather.

Doug provides more advice to entrepreneurs on how to launch and run a successful business at his excellent SchoolforStartups boot-camps for entrepreneurs. Recommended.

Andrew
Pearl

Why is it that the Government pay people not to go to work out of the money Employers have to pay to allow people to work???????????????????? Der

I worked for years in enterprise and job creation.  With the best of intentions. Believing in what I was going.

Looking back, and seeing all the exponentially increasing number of others that followed in our footsteps, I now see that all I, and my Agency, produced was self-serving propaganda. We didn't count jobs created so much as nice stories about those who might/wanted to/deserved to create businesses. It didn't happen. We wasted out time, their time, and money that would have been better spent as Doug suggests.

Job Creation schemes are Smoke and Mirrors.

Pretty but nothing to do with jobs or businesses.

Prof. Mike Robinson rtd.

now running Sageforce Ltd, and Petsitters Alliance Ltd (real companies)

Hell will freeze over first before this current government does anything to reduce the burden of red tape. After all, there are thousands upon thousands of otherwise unemployable petty officials dependent upon their ill paid jobs, courtesy of this government. What are they to do with nothing to check and rubber stamp?

It is astonishing that so many people still join the ranks of the self-employed, when every official form that is sent to them is virtually guaranteed to result in a penalty if not completed in time or not completed correctly. Of course when it comes to the incompetence and delays suffered at the hands of government departments, it is a different story. There is no accountability, and usually no recompense for screwing up peoples' lives.

Having myself been self-employed for 12 years, I have almost become accustomed to the continuous stream of legislation that has to be complied with.  I am quite sure that the law of diminishing returns comes into play here, the more that government imposes upon us, the less benefit will arise, and fewer people will bother to comply, particularly when there there is no obvious benefit. Laws simply become a means of trying to control us rather than providing an overall framework for the economy to thrive.

Until we have a government less focussed on control freakery, there is no hope of a reduction in red tape, far from it. This government is, and will remain addicted to it.

I'd always thought my (rarely stated) politics were to right of Genghis Khan, but I must take issue with "Anonymous" and their "Why do we pay people not to work?" post.

You cannot 'tar' all the long-term unemployed with the 'same brush'.  I have no doubt there are some who play the system and are happy to make long term unemployment their profession.  But I also have personal experience of several periods of long term unemployment myself, and like all the others I met in the process of trying to do something about it, I had no desire for it to last a day longer than I could help.

When someone is diligently applying themselves to finding employment in a situation like this, finding a job is a full time job - absolutely literally.  Any time compulsorily spent on "community service" would detract from the opportunity to return to work, and thus extend both the agony and the cost to the country of being where one most certainly doesn't want to be.

A similar argument can be applied to compulsory "skills training".  Many if not most of the people I met at those times were already over-skilled, yet applying for jobs beneath their skill levels - a common suggestion from the Job Centre staff - merely put them in competition with others more ideally suited to such vacancies, and indeed made them appear a threat to the careers of those who might be interviewing them.

Yes, we need to eradicate the culture of making long term unemployment a career choice, but a sensible, well thought out scheme of 'horses for courses' measures to support those with a burning desire to work (and pay taxes) should be the goal.

David

David, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I did not intend my post to be seen as targetting the unemployed in its entirety.

I have no problem with the unemployed that actually seek work. I am also aware that lots of unemployed people do re-training and volunteer work. The unemployed in this category are to be admired, not villified.

I do have problems with the 'career' unemployed, that are unwilling to work, and those who refuse work because they cannot acquire a job they would 'enjoy'. I also have a big problem with a benefits system that actually deters people from taking jobs because they are financially better off on benefits.

Glad we see eye to eye!

David

Hear Hear!! we need a business friendly government - no hangers on! and sort out the employment legislation and perhaps limit EU imposed matters on us.....

 I do agree that there is far to much red tape, but I think the problem also lies in lost generations.

 The uk government over 3 decades now have let the educational system drop to dreadful levels.  The young generation in the past, and now should have been guided, that if you where not strong enough for university, that there where other ways to achieve, they may take longer but it is still worth it. Also the government was happy to turn there nose up at proper apprentices , there are loads of companies in the UK that are now short of skilled tradesmen in loads of areas .  I think as a country we are now paying highly for the the lack of skilled people who in past have have created some great businesses.  I really feel the government should educate people better in first place and then maybe we would have a few more entrepreneurs in the waiting, instead of a very deflated workforce.  I really worry for young at the moment.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with all the above posts - written by people with a common sense view on what we need to make this country strong again. Question is what do we do about it - is there any way we can combine our forces to create a pressure group with some clout. The next Conservative government dont sound to me like they have much more of a clue than Labour

Maybe that's just what we need to do.