The Department of Trade and Industry has published proposals for slashing red tape costs to companies by £1 billion by 2010.
In addition, trade secretary Alan Johnson has called on all businesses to put forward further proposals to help reduce regulatory costs along with commenting on the current proposals.
The draft simplification plan, which is part of the wider better regulation programme, includes:
- Changes to company law to make it easier to understand and more flexible
- Replacing the Operating and Financial Review with a simpler 'Business Review'
- Consumer law rationalisation and deregulation
- Companies House: new e-government services and harmonised joint filing
- Common commencement dates to be extended across all DTI areas
- Business.gov web portal ' improvements and 'see-at-a-glance' alerts to new regulations.
Alan Johnson said: 'DTI will be a leader on the Government's better regulation programme. The draft simplification plan I am publishing today shows how we will deliver over £1 billion regulatory savings to business by 2010 with more to come as we develop our ambitious forward programme. This will be a rolling plan, updated and published regularly.
'We are working closely with business in developing the DTI Simplification Plan and need their help to make it even stronger. We want businesses to talk to us about the changes they want to see.'
You can find the full proposals plus a template for comments at http://www.dti.gov.uk/simplify the official closing date for the consultation is January 31 but comments are encouraged at any time.