Small firms ‘save £300m’ in safety shake-up

Small businesses could save £300m a year by seeking free advice on health & safety instead of paying consultancies to provide the information, ministers suggest.

The facts:

The Better Regulation Executive published a report on how to improve the way business owners access advice from government sources. It said the enhanced service would provide enough information to cover small or ‘low risk’ businesses.

There are around 1,500 health & safety consultancies in the UK turning over £1bn. The report says small businesses spend £350 each a year seeking information from them and acting on their advice.

It suggests that if 20 per cent of low risk businesses researched advice on government resources, it would cut the collective annual bill by £140m. The average business spends 20 hours a year complying with safety rules, cutting this figure by five hours would create a notional saving of £150m.

Improvements recommend in the report include:

•    Improved web-based and telephone support, offering advice as well as information for low risk businesses;

•    Better advice to help small businesses understand when to buy the help of consultants for health and safety advice;

•    Making inspection and enforcement more efficient, focusing on higher risk workplaces meaning fewer inspections for low risk firms;

•    Developing a new, single scheme so small businesses can have just one process to deal with a range of requirements, including health & safety, fire, food safety regulations.

They said:

Business secretary John Hutton said: "Introducing simple steps, such as making information more easily available and getting better advice to firms that need it, will help save time and money for UK business.

“Cutting the amount of paperwork for low risk businesses, and making complex regulations easier to understand, will also help create safer environments for workers and the public.”

We say:

Anything that simplifies the way businesses comply with the law gets our thumbs up. But this is just a report and genuine change will take time (if it happens at all), so don’t hold your breath.

One apparently contradictory aspect of the report is the ‘saving’ made by small businesses in seeking free government advice will have a direct and proportional negative impact on health & safety consultancies, also mostly small businesses.

So it’s not all good news.

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By News Desk  on   Aug 07,2008

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Keywords

health and saftey    red tape    compliance    consultancies    advice    government    small business   

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